Second Guesses
by Acacia Carter
Summary: Neville has got quite enough to be getting on with, thank you very much, and this new situation with Luna is complicating things even more. Complete.
1. The Oven is Full of Pans

It wasn't that he was particularly bad at the tidying, household-y sort of spells. Well, he was, but that wasn't why Neville usually preferred to do the housework by hand. Much like turning the earth outside in the gardens, there was a certain satisfaction to doing things with one's hands that was missing when one did it by magic. It seemed, he mused as he tossed a rogue apple core into the bin, that the faster you did things, the more things you found you had time to do, and soon you'd spent the whole day on chores and were so tired you couldn't stand.

Then, too, cleaning by hand left the mind time to think, rather than focus on whatever menial task you were trying to perform by "breaking the Muggle laws of physics," as his roommate so eloquently put it. There was little more exhausting and boring than focusing on scrubbing a plate perfectly, not when you could do it by hand and think about something else. Cleaning left plenty of time for daydreaming.

Or fretting. Fretting was Neville's mental occupation of choice at the moment. The reason for his fretting was currently unfolded on the kitchen table, a surface he could have sworn was clean an hour ago, but was now covered with the detritus of half a morning's cleaning: soiled tea towels, a sad-looking sponge, things that were too important to throw away but not important enough to be stowed where they belonged just yet, and a stack of books that he kept forgetting to take to his bedroom every time he passed them but remembered every time he walked into his bedroom.

_Dear Neville,_

_It's me, your sometimes roommate. I promised last time I'd give you warning before I showed up in my room again, which seemed rather odd to me, but as you requested it and it's your house really I suppose I'm finding myself writing this letter._

_Traveling hasn't gone well this time around, I suspect because I wrote down everything I was going to do ahead of time. Biblioles are nosy creatures (it's why I won't write anything personal in this letter, I promise!) and they've probably warned the Crumple-Horned Snorkack that I was coming, and it's gone into hiding. They're very wily beasts, you know, or so Dad says, as I've never had the honor of meeting one._

_I seem to have bruised my hip somewhere. I don't remember bruising it. You would think I would remember doing something like that. It's really quite painful whenever I prod it._

_My bedroom at Dad's is still filled by a printing press, so I suppose I'll have to come to my bedroom at your place and pay you some rent so you'll let me stay again. Is the New Zealand bloke still there? I don't think he likes me very much, although that may have been the perfume I was wearing (it smells different to different people depending on how attractive you find them, and to be frank, I didn't find him very attractive at all). At least that's what the bottle says, and I think it makes me smell delicious, and I find myself quite attractive, which is perhaps a bit vain but I'm not particularly worried. Maybe you can tell me what you smell. Except I've lost the bottle._

_-Luna_

_P.S. Friday! I'll be there Friday!_

It was Friday morning, and somehow, Neville had left the cleaning to the very last minute, despite having had three days' warning. Glancing around the place, he was sorely tempted to give up and do what he could with a _scourgify–_it wasn't as though Luna hadn't seen the house a mess before.

He picked up the letter again and walked slowly to his bedroom (once more forgetting the stack of books), scanning the words. Something about it made him vaguely nervous; he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Yes, the New Zealand bloke was still here–technically, anyway. His lease wasn't up, at any rate, and he hadn't stopped paying the pittance that Neville asked for rent, but his possessions had been disappearing little by little ever since Neville had introduced him to that girl from his Antidotes seminar, the one who said she liked accents. Neville had a hunch that when his lease was up in two months, he wouldn't be renewing it. In fact, Neville hadn't seen Tobias for some four months now.

Which meant that the mess in the house was all his. He looked around his bedroom and sighed heavily. Gran would have a royal conniption if she could see the state he'd let the house get into.

That thought alone was enough to make him hurry back down into the sitting room, intent on tidying hastily. It was unlikely Gran would be back; he knew that when she'd signed the house over to him, telling him she was going to "go traveling," that what she meant was "find a place to die." It wasn't a rare thing for elderly witches and wizards to do, particularly the ones like Gran who wouldn't tolerate being bedridden and fawned over, but Neville had still felt a small shock when she'd told him. Oh, certainly–she said she was only signing the house over so that it knew whom to obey while she was gone, but both of them knew what she really meant.

Neville glared at the sitting room as though it was all its fault it was untidy. Honestly, he didn't know how it had gotten this way–_he _wasn't untidy. He just had better things to do than clean up after himself, like study feverishly for his Antidotes seminar, which (his stomach lurched to remind him) he would have to pass if he didn't want to be removed from Auror training. His knowledge of Herbology was really the only thing keeping him afloat at the moment, even if it was tremendously easier to brew an antidote without Snape breathing down his neck, waiting for him to make a mistake.

He raised his wand and tried to assume a commanding stance. "_Scourgify,_" he said, probably a bit more hopefully than the spell would respond to.

Well, at least the dust was gone, and the books and notes and rolls of parchment had aligned themselves in a way that was almost neat, if you squinted. The teacups were still there, though, and the remnants of dinners that were rather unhealthier than he should be eating on a regular basis. If he wasn't careful he'd gain back the paunch he'd so painstakingly lost over the last three years.

It was because she'd asked him to smell her. That's what was unsettling about the letter. She'd asked him to smell her perfume, which (allegedly) smelled different depending on how attractive the wearer found you. From any other girl, that would be a definite flirtation. From Luna, though...

Really, he admitted to himself, either way, he didn't know how to react. He'd thought he'd get used to feminine attention, what with the whole thing with Dumbledore's Army and the snake and the sword and all the rest–but every time, he still managed to find his tongue had grown three sizes too large to fit in his mouth, his spine turned to jelly, and his vocabulary was reduced to that of a rather thick budgerigar.

This was not the ultra-suave, confident, and heroic Neville Longbottom they'd heard about. They usually turned their attentions to someone else then. Neville had convinced himself that this was somewhat of a relief: he didn't have time for a girlfriend right now, not with Auror training taking up ten hours of every day and studying taking up another seven. He'd pointedly ignored the article in Witch Weekly that had come out last year detailing his "shagworthiness," a feature that he didn't even remember being interviewed for. All right, he did sometimes spend a bit too much time in the mirror combing his hair different ways and trying to figure out if his biceps were any larger than the last time he'd checked. But that was just vanity. Completely normal, no matter that Tobias had snorted his tea when Neville had casually walked down to breakfast one morning with his hair slicked back, and had had to have Neville pound on his back to keep him from choking. (The slicked-back hairstyle hadn't survived the morning, for which Neville supposed the world was thankful if Tobias's reaction was anything to go by.)

The kitchen was problematic. He'd be more than happy to scrub some dishes if there were room in the sink, but there was no space on the counters to empty the sink onto. Maybe he could put some of the things in the oven? Oh–it looked like he'd already tried that. When had he done that? The last time he'd tried to clean? When had that been?

Really, a good curse to flatten the place was what he needed. He could live in a tent in the yard.

He sighed heavily again, and decided that he really had only one option. He tugged a bit of parchment that wasn't covered in alchemical symbols from the stack in the sitting room and grabbed a quill.

_Hermione,_

_HELP. I'M BURIED IN RUBBISH AND OLD BEANS AND THE OVEN IS FULL OF PANS._

_-Neville_

He tied his plea to the leg of the family owl. "If you get that to her quick, Max, there's three owl treats in it for you," he promised. Maximus hooted in what he hoped was enthusiasm and flew out the window once Neville opened it. He watched the owl fly out of sight and hoped fervently that Hermione wasn't doing anything that couldn't be interrupted.

He seemed to recall Luna smelling rather nice. A bit like ginger, really, ginger and something citrus. And herbal, there was definitely something like...like mugwort. Ginger, citrus, and mugwort. He was slightly proud of himself for having pinpointed it.

This wasn't what he was supposed to be thinking about right now. He turned to face the kitchen, put the letter he'd been carrying round the whole house on the table, and picked up the stack of books, fully intending to take them to his bedroom, but instead depositing them absently on the coffee table in the sitting room as he instead gathered an armful of laundry that he'd dropped on the floor next to the sofa, intending to fold and never actually getting around to it. Hermione didn't need to see his pants. Nor did Luna.

Once he'd deposited the laundry on his bed, atop the other piles of laundry he'd found scattered around the house, he grabbed a stack of plates from his desk, which he'd been intending to clean off for ages so he could use it to study instead of the sitting room floor. That's what the desk was for, but it had somehow morphed into a place to put dirty plates. Well, no more. From now on, he would study in his room, at a desk, like a normal person.

Why had she asked him to smell her? Was it flirtation? Or was it just Luna being Luna? Oh, bloody hell, what if Luna _was _flirting with him? Could he pretend she wasn't? Would that be insensitive?

There was a sharp knock at the door downstairs and Neville nearly jumped out of his skin. He balanced the plates and hurried down the stairs, clattering slightly, and pulled open the door.

"Old beans?" Hermione asked, arms crossed and an attempt to look stern on her face.

Neville nodded. "And the oven's full of pans. Please, Hermione, Luna's coming back here for a while and–"

"And you've been living like the ultimate student bachelor," Hermione finished, pushing past him with amused exasperation. "Harry's the same way. When will you boys ever learn it's easier to clean up right after you make the mess, rather than leave it to the end?"

"I've learned that lesson now," Neville said hopefully. Hermione shook her head and laughed.

"No, you haven't. I'll have to do this at least once more."

"So you'll help?" Neville asked. Hermione nodded. "You are truly a godsend. Seriously."

Hermione's lips twisted into a half-smile and she gestured to the piles of books and notes in the living room as she raised her wand. "Grab anything you want to keep there. I don't want to move anything you've got organized."

Neville blinked. Organized? Hoping to appear far more studious than he actually was, he hastily arranged the notes and books into a somewhat neater pile and then nodded at Hermione, who gave him a _you are bullshitting so hard _look and flicked her wand in a delicate figure-of-eight.

It was a bit like a hurricane in reverse. Plates and teacups and glasses, suddenly spotless, flew to take their places in cupboards. The pancake batter Neville had just kind of assumed as the new kitchen ceiling decor disappeared. The sad-looking sponge on the kitchen table began zooming around the kitchen counters, which were suddenly clear for the first time he could recall since moving in. The windows lost the dingy sheen he hadn't even noticed until it was gone, he could hear the loo flushing itself upstairs–oh god, he'd forgotten how disgusting the loo had looked–and the rug suddenly looked a much brighter shade of pale green than it had a few moments ago. Suddenly empty, the bin made a small noise of protest at this unfair treatment; a few empty kipper tins flew into it and it stopped, appeased.

Neville's jaw dropped. He'd seen her do this once before after a rather raucous party at Harry's, but he'd been more than a little tipsy at the time, and not of a mind to truly appreciate it, as it hadn't been his mess suddenly becoming a thing of the past.

"Hermione," he said, his voice throbbing with gratitude, "Marry me."

"Taken, but thanks," Hermione said flippantly. "I've left the bedrooms alone, but the rest of the house should be livable." She rolled her eyes and laughed at the expression on his face as he looked around the downstairs. Even the curtains looked cleaner. How could _curtains_ look cleaner?

"Seriously," he said, "How can I thank you? Can I take you to lunch? Buy you a book? You and Ron have a garden, right? I'll fix that right up, the Bluebells will sing praises for you. Literally. I know how to make them do that."

"Just don't let it get that bad again," Hermione said wryly. "Although lunch sounds good, too."

"Done," Neville said decisively, though he threw a little guilty look at his Antidotes books. Ah well, he had the weekend, and the exam wasn't for ages. "Where do you want?"

"Jillian's would do nicely," Hermione said. "I've been craving their mushroom barley soup for weeks now, but never seem to get over there."

"Your wish is my command," Neville said expansively, summoning his jacket to him and surreptitiously patting the inner pocket to be sure this was the one with the galleons in.

The small cafe was busy, and he and Hermione had to stand for several minutes before they were seated in the midst of the lunchtime rush. They chatted easily; Neville was intensely grateful that talking with Hermione was still easy. It gave him at least a little hope that he'd still be able to be normal around Luna.

"So are you coming tomorrow?" Hermione asked. Neville stared blankly. "The Harpies game? They're playing the Widdershins Wenches."

"And I bet that's all you know about the match," Neville said with a knowing arch to the eyebrow. Hermione shrugged and spooned some soup into her mouth.

"All I really need to know. You and Ron and Harry can go on about Chaser match-ups and Seeker builds if you want. I know when to cheer."

"I don't know," Neville said, remembering the pile of notes that he should really get through before the weekend was over. "Luna will undoubtedly want to catch up now she's back for a little while..."

"Well, she can come too," Hermione said matter-of-factly. "We can all go to the afterparty. Ginny will get us in; she did last time." She grinned mischievously. "Last time she tricked Harry into snogging the Seeker. She does look like Ginny, and Harry didn't even notice the difference until she'd started laughing–"

The temptation was sore. It had really been a long time since he'd gone out with his friends, and he got the nagging feeling that time with them would be wearing thin after Ron and Hermione's wedding next summer. Harry had confided to him that he was going to be proposing to Ginny any day now, when the time was right, and once his friends all paired off he knew that the group gatherings would become much fewer and far between.

The notes stared at him accusingly in his head. He did want to be an Auror, didn't he?

The practical isn't for another four weeks, he told them. And it wasn't as though this was the only weekend he'd ever have again.

"Okay," he found himself saying. "I'll ask her if she wants to come. We'll all catch up."

"Brilliant," Hermione beamed. She gave him a teasing little smile. "Who knows, two all-ladies Quidditch teams–maybe you'll get lucky."

Neville choked on his bacon sandwich. "Say what?" he asked once his windpipe had cleared, tears in his eyes from the coughing. Hermione didn't answer immediately, as she had gone into fits of laughter at his reaction.

"I was joking," she finally gasped, "Although I've apparently struck a chord."

"Hermione," he said, a little desperately –everyone in the cafe was looking sidelong at him now–"I'm not that kind of bloke. I don't–I don't troll around hoping to 'get lucky.'"

"Which is why I was joking," Hermione said. "Honestly, sometimes you take everything so literally."

"Sorry," he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin, wishing everyone would stop looking at him. "I'm just...jumpy. I haven't seen Luna in a while."

"Oh," Hermione said, and a knowing smile crept across her face. "Oh," she said again. "It's like that, is it?"

"No." Neville said quickly. Then, "Maybe? I don't know. Just...something she said in her letter... I think I'm reading way too far into it, it's probably just Luna being Luna, but..."

Hermione patted his arm. "At least the house is clean, right?"

Neville nodded fervently. "Thank you. Again. At least there's that."

Hermione nodded, that smile still on her face. "Well. Bring her tomorrow. If nothing else, it'll be good to see her again, right?"

"Right."

Ginger and citrus and mugwort. Now that he'd identified it, he couldn't stop remembering it.


	2. An Exemplary Friend

Neville hung his jacket on the peg by the door, slightly proud that he didn't just drape it over the back of the chair like he usually did. Baby steps.

With a vague idea of finishing clearing off his desk so he could get some studying in before Luna arrived, he headed up the stairs, absently wondering exactly what time it was and looking at his watch, which was why he didn't notice immediately that there was a slender blonde figure in a fluffy blue towel standing in the doorway of the bathroom at the top of the steps.

When the image had been properly translated by his brain, Neville yelped and made an ungainly about-face, his cheeks burning.

"Hello, Neville!" Luna said brightly. "I thought I heard you come home."

"Hey, Luna," Neville said, eyes very firmly on the corner of the banister. "I wasn't expecting you until later."

"Oh, the hot water is out at Dad's. Otherwise you would have been correct." There was a pause. "What are you looking at?" And then she was at his elbow, peering curiously at the corner of the banister, her wet hair brushing against his arm.

"I'm trying to be polite," Neville said, his heart pounding rather quickly as he turned again.

"Oh! You're trying to preserve my modesty." She sounded delighted. "I haven't had anyone be a gentleman to me for a long time."

"Yeah, well," Neville said, because it seemed like someone should be saying something.

"It seems like a rather uncomfortable thing," Luna observed after a moment. "Perhaps that's why people don't do it much. Would you like me to go dress?"

"Yes, please," Neville responded, resolutely pushing the rather animalistic typical male response to a dark corner of his mind, where it snarled in frustration at Neville's chivalry. He did not remove his eyes from the spot of wallpaper he was studying until he heard the click of her bedroom door closing, at which point he sighed in relief and fled to his own bedroom, where the likelihood of unexpected, almost-naked females was very low.

Again, he mused to himself, those signals coming from nearly any other girl would have been blatantly obvious. But from Luna, who in previous intervals staying here had often walked down the hallway from bathroom to bedroom stark naked? Perhaps he should just be grateful she'd been wearing a towel.

She was Luna, he reminded himself forcefully. She was one of his best friends, almost like the sister he'd never had. Obsessing over nonexistent signals would only drive him mad and probably make her uncomfortable, at least as far as it was possible for Luna to become uncomfortable. He couldn't ever recall her actually being discomfited, but Neville misinterpreting her actions and, worse, responding in kind would probably do it, not to mention absolutely ruin the friendship that he so valued.

He finally rested his gaze on his desk which, despite being empty of plates, still looked distressingly messy and unsuited to studying. He could clear it off, he supposed, but all his notes were already downstairs, and he'd gotten quite used to sprawling on the floor with a cup of tea at his knee. It made little sense to alter his study habits now, and besides, studying downstairs would be much more sociable.

He was curled over a roll of parchment, desperately trying to calculate the concentration of dead sea salt required to counteract a standard draft of Hypotonic Chills Elixer, when the rustling of someone at the bottom of the stairs made him glance up and over his shoulder.

Well, she was clothed, at least—a billowy periwinkle robe over a shockingly purple dress thickly embroidered in white. The effect was rather pleasant, once his retinas stopped aching at the magnitude of the purple. Neville pushed himself to his feet and grinned.

"Now that it's proper to do so," he said, and held open his arms. Luna bowled into him, nearly knocking the breath out of him, and wrapped her arms firmly around his torso.

"It's so good to see you again! And you didn't move anything in my room!"

"It's your room," Neville said, puzzled. "Why would I move anything?"

"Well, it's been nearly a year," Luna pointed out, "And Dad put everything of mine into a box and put the box out in the shed once I'd been gone six months. I don't mind, though, he needed to put up the extra printing press and I wasn't using the bedroom anyway, not since I moved here." She let go and stood back, smiling enigmatically. "You've changed."

"Have I?" He'd nearly forgotten how quickly Luna could change subjects.

"Not a lot, and not badly—but you've got cheekbones now, and your eyebrows are smoother." She nodded seriously. "Oh, and you don't talk like you're embarrassed you have a voice."

What was he supposed to say to that? "You look different, too," he managed. "Your... hair's darker." Brilliant. Bloody brilliant. "And you're not limping anymore."

"Oh, I stopped limping a while ago," Luna responded easily. "One day I forgot to and then realized that it didn't hurt anymore, and I'd been limping out of habit for months. Funny how that works, isn't it? And I'd show you my bruise, the one I didn't know I'd gotten, but it's on my hip and it's awkward to get to right now. I think it's shaped a bit like a hummingbird."

"I'll take your word for it," Neville said, flushing just slightly. "Have a seat, I'll make tea. Where have you been this time around?"

"Canada," Luna said, perching herself on the edge of the kitchen table to watch Neville. "I don't think that's where the Crumple-Horned Snorkack could be, but you never know. It could have crossed the land bridge one winter."

"Canada? How'd you get all the way over there?" Neville asked.

"A TransAtlantic Portkey, of course. They're really not much fun, and you're terribly disoriented once you get there. But it's beautiful. There are lots more wild places. That's why I went looking there." Luna kicked her bare feet idly, spending a few moments watching Neville pour hot water over the tea leaves. "I'm starting to wonder if maybe Dad made up the whole thing, and then liked it so much he started believing it. He's done it before with lots of things."

"I honestly couldn't say," Neville said after casting about in his brain for a proper response. He certainly didn't want to speak ill of her efforts over the last three years, but that she might finally be coming to terms with the fact that she had been spending her time chasing a made-up creature was reassuring. Maybe she'd stay here for longer periods of time now.

"It seems likely, but there are several more places I'll have to check to be sure," Luna continued seriously. "I haven't been to Australia yet, for example, and Australia has so many places people don't go, it's bound to be there."

"You keep referring to it as 'it,'" Neville said, deciding to humor her if only to keep her talking. "Is there only the one?"

Luna nodded sadly. "That's why it's so hard to find. It's been wandering the world, looking for a mate, for the past century. They're very long-lived, you know."

"Ah," Neville said. "I expect it's lonely, then." He placed a teacup by Luna's hip and another at his place at the table.

"You're quite sweet, did you know that?" Luna asked as she picked up the cup to examine.

"Say what?" Neville asked, somewhat startled.

"Pretending you believe it exists to keep me happy. There aren't a lot of people who would do that. But then, you've always been an exemplary friend." She held up the teacup. "This china pattern was first created by a witch who wanted her tea service to look pretty but still insult the people she didn't like. That's why it's covered in runes, see, this one spells out 'POO.'"

Neville blinked. Which of those remarks was he supposed to respond to first? "Gran's had this tea service since before I was born," he said, examining his own cup. "Wonder if she knew what it meant. I don't think she took Ancient Runes when she was in school."

"Oh, they're not Ancient Runes," Luna assured him. "They're Heliopic runes. You can only read them if you were born during the daytime, but you can only write them if you were born at night."

Neville wasn't entirely certain Heliopic runes were real, but still... "How can you write something without being able to read it?" he asked.

"You have to be a very good speller," Luna said. "Otherwise you'd spell a word wrong and not even know it."

"...And what keeps you from writing them if you were born during the day?"

Luna looked at him evenly. "Magic," she said simply, and handed him her teacup. "You're oversteeping."

"What?"

"The tea."

"Oh. Right." He began to pour. "And thanks."

"You're welcome. What are you thanking me for?"

Neville smiled. "For saying I'm a good friend."

"Exemplary, I think I said," Luna corrected as she hopped off the table. "You've forgotten the sugar. You're the only friend from school who writes me when I'm away. You let me stay in your house, even though you could rent my room to someone else."

"I don't want to rent it to anyone else," Neville said. "You take cream?"

"No."

"Good, because we don't have any." Neville sat down, watched Luna seat herself across from him. "We've got a history. You and I, we stick together. It's how it's mostly been since we met, and I don't see that stopping. Unless you get yourself run through by a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, I suppose, but that doesn't seem likely." He grinned over the rim of his cup. "You're far too careful for that."

Luna smiled dreamily. "I've never had a friend like you before, Neville," she said happily before sipping her tea. "Don't go changing too much when I'm gone again."

"Never," Neville promised, his stomach sinking slightly at the knowledge that she would be leaving again. "Speaking of friends... there's a Holyhead Harpies game tomorrow, and then a party afterward. I was wondering if you'd come with me. To meet with the rest of the gang," he added hurriedly. "They're excited you're back. We've all missed you."

"Ooh," Luna said, her eyes shining. "I haven't been to a Quidditch game since the last Hogwarts match. It wasn't very good, as I recall. Very snowy. One of the Hufflepuff Beaters caught the Snitch by accident. It flew up his sleeve."

There was a pause. "Was that a yes?" Neville pressed.

"Oh! Yes, it was. I'd love to go to a Quidditch game with you." She sipped her tea serenely, seeming as though she was studying his face. Neville tried very hard to keep it smooth as he sipped his own tea, trying to decide if she'd intended that last "with you" to have significance.

* * *

><p>"She's really, really hard to read," Neville said to Harry, not taking his eyes off her as he took a swig of beer from the bottle. She was talking animatedly with Ginny and one of her teammates across the room, both of whom looked slightly quizzical and amused at the same time.<p>

"You're just now noticing this?" Harry asked.

"No, I've just... never had to read her before," Neville responded. He tore his eyes away from her before she could feel them, like it seemed she could sometimes.

"And why is reading her so important?" Harry inquired, raising an eyebrow. Neville took another drink to give himself time to consider a response, glad that the tavern was dimly lit to hide the heat in his cheeks.

"Because I don't want to do the wrong thing," he said finally, after stalling for perhaps a bit too long. "Ron and Hermione may have worked out like a cauldron on fire, but... she's one of my closest friends. I really, really don't want to mess that up." He sighed, watching her out of the corner of his eye. "To be honest, I don't even know if I actually fancy her or if I think I do because there's a possibility she fancies me."

"Neville," Harry said, putting one hand very seriously on Neville's shoulder, "You're one of my best mates. But I am so glad that I don't have to go through this sort of thing anymore."

"Gee, thanks," Neville said sarcastically. "You're such a beacon of solidarity." He glanced over again; they were laughing, and Luna caught his eye and waved enthusiastically. He grinned, gave a sort of half-wave in response, and then pretended he had to tie his shoe.

"Anyway," Harry said, clearly amused at the exchange but too good of a friend to say anything about it, "You're almost done with Auror training. How's that feel?"

Neville groaned. "Like I'm standing at the edge of a very tall cliff, and it's windy." He shook his head and took another swallow of beer, emptying the bottle. "I should have done the Antidotes seminar first, gotten failure out of the way so I could have done something more productive these last three years."

"It can't be that bad," Harry said. "I mean, all right, I didn't do that great in it, but—"

"You still had a year of N.E.W.T. potions," Neville pointed out. "I haven't done anything appreciable in Potions since I was fifteen. Really, they shouldn't have accepted me into the program at all—lopping the head off a snake doesn't mean I suddenly got Outstanding on all my O.W.L.s. I don't have the background I need at all. I scraped by in Concealment and Disguise but Antidotes is going to kill me. Possibly literally," he added as an afterthought., "We're preparing for the practical for the next several weeks which means I'll be spending four hours a day in varying states of being poisoned."

Harry winced. "Yeah. That wasn't my favorite part."

"And," Neville added, rolling the beer bottle from hand to hand and wishing it wasn't empty, "I can't make heads or tails of the reading. They do know that Hogwarts doesn't teach Alchemy, right? All the calculations are making my head spin."

"Well," Harry said expansively, "If only you knew someone who got Outstandings at O.W.L. _and _N.E.W.T. Potions and Arithmancy who would be willing to help you study. It'd be bloody brilliant if she lived in the same house as you. But, no, she'd have to be someone you'd like to spend unreasonable amounts of time with. Therein lies the rub. Too bad we don't know anybody like that."

"Oh, great master of subtlety, where can I learn your wily tricks?" Neville asked, deadpan.

"It's a gift," Harry said loftily. He drew his wand and pointed it at Neville's bottle; it refilled itself with a gurgle. "Seriously, though. Ask Luna. Even if it gets both of you nowhere in your little drama, you just might pass Antidotes."

"I didn't say it wasn't a good idea," Neville said grudgingly. "Just that you're blunt as an old brick."

"Well," Harry said, standing up, "I'm going to go be blunt with my girlfriend before she goes and latches onto some other teammates. Let me know how being oblique is going for you."

"Don't think I didn't notice the Arithmancy pun!" Neville called after Harry as he wove his way through the crowd. Neville could swear that his friend's back smirked. "You owe me at least a Sickle for that, it was awful!"

"What was awful?" a voice said behind him, and Neville nearly slopped beer down his front. How the bloody hell did she move so fast? Just a minute ago she'd been across the room in that little knot of girls.

"Nothing," he said. "A really bad joke. You had to have been there."

"I see." Luna looked intently at a fingernail for a moment, then looked up again. "If I'm going to help you with your Antidotes studying, we ought to head home. It seems likely we'll spend most of the morning with headaches and maybe we can get a head start on them."

"What—but—how much did you hear?" Neville stammered, the flush in his face having nothing to do with the alcohol in his system. Granted, if she had overheard maybe she would stop being so—well, oblique, that was as good a word as any, _damn you, Harry_—but that was not exactly the way he'd wanted to reveal everything...

Luna cocked her head to one side. "Hermione told me she thought you were having trouble focusing, and she asked me if I'd help you get things figured out." She smiled somewhat hazily. "You're very bright. I'm sure we can get the muzziness out of your head with a Gurdyroot infusion and a solid application of Agrippa's Eight Alchemical Principles."

Neville felt slightly off-balance. "So... you didn't overhear me and Harry."

"If you'd like I can pretend I did, so you can use the escape plan you were constructing so frantically," she offered. "But you'll have to tell me what I was supposed to overhear otherwise it won't be very convincing."

"No," Neville said, shaking his head in a bemused fashion. "No, that's really all right. Are you sure you want to leave? It's still early. Harry hasn't made a right fool of himself yet, and that's always entertaining."

As he said these words, however, there was a shout and a great roar of laughter and cheering. Standing on his tiptoes, Neville could see Ron and the boyfriend of one of the Beaters gripping Harry firmly by the ankles and armpits, suspending him between them as he struggled, a second before they unceremoniously dumped him in the giant tub of mostly-melted ice where the beers and other beverages had been chilling. Harry swore and unsuccessfully made several attempts to escape the tub but Ginny, laughing hysterically, pushed him back in easily. Defeated and dripping, it seemed as though Harry had to satisfy himself by lobbing chunks of ice at those surrounding him.

"Actually," Neville said thoughtfully, "I think I'm good now. Let's go." He caught Hermione's eye in the corner where she was shaking her head and trying not to look terribly amused, mouthed "GOODBYE," and waved. She nodded and waved back, and Neville was sure she winked, for which she would pay later.

The wind and rain outside was unpleasant, and Neville drew his coat a bit more tightly around himself. "Are you good to Apparate?" he asked Luna, who seemed a little unsteady on her feet. Luna considered.

"Probably not," she confided. "There were rum-filled chocolate frogs that were quite delicious, and the barmaid was demonstrating how to pour absinthe properly, and the other team's Keeper had something blue and delicious that I had to order, and..."

Neville sighed, amused. "Take my arm," he said, smiling slightly. "I'll get us home."

Luna beamed at him as she took his arm. Neville allowed himself one short moment to consider how nice it felt before he took out his wand and turned on the spot, and they Disapparated into the night.


	3. Principles

He had decided that no, it really was quite hopeless.

Despite the assurances that all he'd need to know was basic algebra in order to solve alchemical equations, the truth was he hadn't had _any_ algebra since his tutor when he was ten, and even that had been the very bare bones. He'd nearly worn his copy of _So You Want To Learn Arithmancy (Without Really Trying)_ to tatters and he was still only barely comprehending the mess in front of him.

He was getting frustrated. He needed to walk away for a moment, and come back when his head cooled.

He pushed himself up off the floor and ambled into the kitchen, considering the prospect of breakfast. He wasn't sure when Luna was going to be up, but it was a quarter of eleven and nearly lunchtime and he was _hungry_.

He'd settled on grilled cheese and tomato, had assembled the pieces and was prodding the griddle with his wand to heat it up when he heard a footfall on the stairs. He turned and craned his neck.

"I'm in the kitchen," he told the tail end of a bright yellow dressing gown. It paused and the wearer turned and trudged into the kitchen. Neville successfully stifled a laugh.

"I believe I need an antidote for low-grade ethanol poisoning," Luna said, slumping into a seat at the table. She rubbed her temples. "Assume the victim is two-thirds through detoxification by metabolic means. What would you brew and how much would you administer?"

Neville laughed—softly. "I take it the blue thing was stronger than you thought?"

"Oh, the blue thing was delicious. This is the absinthe. Your kitchen is quite bright, did you know that? And very loud. Still, I asked you a question, and I kind of really, really want to know the answer."

This was the least Luna-like Luna Neville had ever encountered. He reached into the pantry and drew out a green bottle.

"I wouldn't waste time brewing you something. I'd just give you a spoonful of this dissolved in hot water."

Luna blinked. "As your tutor, I should chide you for being lazy and avoiding my query. But as your very hung over and miserable friend, give that to me right now."

Chuckling, Neville poured a healthy dose into a teacup and hot water from the kettle over that. The steam smelled very strongly of licorice and spearmint as he handed it over.

"Don't sip it," he warned. "Drink it all down in one go. You shouldn't feel the temperature, but it might be a bit... unpleasant."

Luna stared into the murky reddish-brown depths of her cup. "I feel like I should be asking what this is, but I honestly don't care enough." She raised the cup to her lips and began draining it; Neville was impressed with her ability to keep a mostly straight face as she did so. It was not a taste that grew better the more you had of it.

"Gran always called it 'Hair of the Dog,'" he said politely as Luna began coughing forcefully. He looked at her back, measuring her up, and pounded once, sharply, with the heel of his hand between her shoulder blades. She gave one last surprised cough and then twisted to look at him.

"And what's in it?" she asked, and it was obvious her head no longer pained her. "It's quite remarkable."

"No idea," Neville answered, shrugging. "The bottle keeps refilling itself. It's a family secret even the family doesn't know." He picked up Luna's empty cup and sniffed at it. "I'm sure there's Mallow root in there, and Echoel buds, and probably some Mindelseed oil, but aside from that?" He shrugged again, putting her cup back down. "Gran would probably kill me for giving it to someone who's not a Longbottom. She's a bit possessive."

"I'm fairly certain girls would line up around the block to marry you for that potion," Luna said serenely as she watched him stow it back away in the pantry.

Neville snorted. "Right, just like they're lining up round the block to have a date with 'Gryffindor's Swordbearer.'"

"Oh? Are they still doing that?" Luna asked, sounding vaguely interested.

Neville finally prodded the griddle to get his sandwich one step closer to becoming reality. "Luna, they never did that. Or if they did, they gave up fairly quickly. I'm not exactly the most eligible bachelor, no matter what Witch Weekly tries to write about me." He felt his ears burn slightly as he remembered the article.

"I wouldn't say that," Luna said. She lifted her wand and wordlessly levitated Neville's sandwich into the griddle for him. "You just don't want to waste your time with someone you couldn't fall in love with. You're very romantic that way."

Blast. Things would be going so well, he'd almost be able to relax and decide they were just friends again, and then she'd go and say something like that and all the words would disappear.

"You think so?" he managed to say, possibly overly casually.

"Oh, yes. I imagine it scares away the girls who don't want something serious, though. That might be why you're discouraged."

"I'm not discouraged," Neville protested, flustered. He flipped his sandwich, mostly as an excuse to take his eyes away from hers for a moment. "Just... preoccupied at the moment. I've got a bloody lot of studying to do, and homework dates stop being acceptable somewhere around the time you leave school."

"I always liked homework dates," Luna said dreamily. "They were much better than going out dancing. I'm too clumsy for dancing." She twirled a lock of hair around her finger.

"You're not clumsy," Neville found himself saying, wondering who had taken over his mouth. "I've seen you dance, you're brilliant. You just..." he trailed off, blushing, and went back to studying his sandwich. "You don't like to use the steps that everyone else is," he finished quietly, addressing the toasted bread. "You use your own." _Neville, stop talking_. "And no one else can hear your music, and they don't understand." _Really, Neville, stop it_. "You're graceful, in your own way." _SHUT UP SHUT UP_

"You've never had me step on your feet," Luna said serenely. "You wouldn't call me graceful then. Is the sandwich ready?" Without waiting for a response she summoned it to her and took a bite.

"Wait—but—that's mine!" Neville said, spinning around.

"Is it? Here, you can have half." Luna matter-of-factly split the sandwich—_his_ sandwich—down the middle and handed one steaming half to him. "Eat up. We've got a lot of ground to cover today."

Knowing better than to argue, Neville accepted his half of the sandwich and took a bite. At least she'd allowed him the bigger half.

* * *

><p>"All right. First off, your penmanship is terrible." Luna held a sheet of parchment at arm's length, turning it on its side. "I can see how you can make nines look like fours, but I can't for the life of me figure out how you're making sevens and threes look similar."<p>

"I can read it just fine, thank you," Neville said, grabbing the paper back and glowering.

"Clearly you can't," Luna said brightly, "Because you've gotten your coefficients backwards."

Neville quickly scanned the equation that ran haphazardly down the page and blushed slightly. "Oh. Um. That might be why I couldn't work it through to the end."

"It's possible," Luna said. "Now I've pointed it out, would you like to give it another go?" She pointedly handed him a quill and a fresh sheet of parchment.

"I suppose I'd better," Neville groaned, and set to work.

It did not take long for him to get stuck, even with the proper numbers. He glanced up, slightly embarrassed. Luna smiled at him.

"What's Agrippa's Fourth Principle?" she asked in an almost singsong tone.

Neville furrowed his brow in thought. "Any ingredient's coefficient can be halved or quartered if its reactant is..." he trailed off. "Oh."

"Caught it?" Luna asked.

"Yeah." He scratched out a line, rewrote it, and suddenly everything else made sense. "Okay, so now that... is reduced to this... but then I don't get enough heat from the reaction to—"

"Agrippa's Third?" Luna prompted.

"Oh, right. So I do get enough heat—which catalyzes this secondary reaction... which needs just over nine grams of gypsia lithanum to nullify," he finished triumphantly. "And not eighty-one, which would kill me faster than the poison I'm trying to counteract."

"You see?" Luna said, patting him on the head. "You've got this. You just have to remember the rules."

"Yes, all I'll need is you at my elbow when I'm taking the practical to remind me of which rules I have to remember," Neville said wryly.

"Do you think they'd let me?" Luna asked, cocking her head to one side.

"Um. No."

"That's a shame. I guess you'll just have to put up with being coached all day, then." She grasped her ankles and folded herself into a cross-legged posture on the couch above him, then flipped through the pages of the study guide Neville had cobbled together. "Okay. Say I've just taken a bite of a delicious grilled cheese and tomato sandwich and as soon as I swallowed, my lips turned blue and my eyes dilated."

Neville considered. "Distressing, but okay. Sounds like Nightcap Draught."

"And say that the sandwich was meant for you."

"...So three drops to take me down, not two, which would certainly do you in."

"And by sheer coincidence, you have a full potions lab and apothecary at your disposal."

"A happy coincidence when my best mate has just been poisoned."

"Indeed. So, how long have you got to save my life, and what can you do in that time?"

"Three drops of Nightcap? About three quarters of an hour. And..." Neville furrowed his brow. "Are you allergic to Sophorus skin?"

"I'm catatonic," Luna reminded him. "You can't ask me anything."

"Right. Okay then." He tapped his finger against his kneecap, staring into middle space as he considered. "Mineral oil as solvent. Eighteen middle-sized Foolskip carapaces, ground fine in a glass mortar, dissolved over blue flame. Fff...four drops of Anna's Lace extract? No, six. Twelve fire beetle eyes, one at a time so it doesn't boil over. Reduce to a red flame until the liquid is effervescent. Decant through a pound of rowan wood charcoal and distill until no particles remain." Neville nodded, satisfied. "Takes about half an hour, but I won't give you anaphylaxis if you're allergic to Sophorus skin."

Luna blinked. "You're having problems with this seminar why?"

Neville held up his quill and parchment. "The proofs. It's not good enough that my antidote works, I have to show why it works, and to be honest, I have no idea why I think that antidote will work." He looked up. "It would work, right? I haven't just killed you?"

"No, it would work. What would it taste like?" She asked intently.

Neville was taken aback. "Like... like arse, I'd imagine," he said honestly.

Luna shook her head. "The Anna's Lace. It'll make the whole thing taste like sour blueberries, no matter what else you add. Agrippa's..." she looked expectantly at Neville.

"Seventh?" he answered hesitantly. She nodded, a giant smile breaking across her face. "But... that only makes tangential sense... oh." His eyes went wide.

"You've just made something on paper make sense in real life, haven't you?" Luna asked excitedly. Neville nodded. "I thought I recognized that shine in your eye. Now don't let it get away." She reached over and closed Neville's eyes with a soft touch that raised gooseflesh on Neville's arms and neck. "Okay. Now that we've saved that, write your proof. Why does your antidote work?"

Neville opened his eyes and blinked hard. To be quite honest, he was now so thoroughly distracted that he wasn't sure he'd even be able to remember the antidote he'd rattled off. He shook his head and started scratching symbols onto the parchment, very aware of Luna's eyes on his work, although how she could read it upside down was beyond him. He could hardly read it right side up.

Surprisingly, everything seemed to be going to paper rather smoothly. Neville glanced up suspiciously a few times, but Luna just kept nodding encouragingly, which he took to mean he was doing things correctly. It was a complicated antidote; he needed half of another sheet of parchment before the proof had reduced to the point of being an acceptable conclusion, which he underlined with gusto before looking up with a triumphant grin.

"That was..." he looked over the sheets he'd just scribbled over. "Well. Not easy. Simple?"

"Sensical," Luna said.

"That's not a word," Neville pointed out.

"I can make it a word if I want to. Nonsensical is a word, so sensical should be, too." She puffed out a breath to blow her fringe out of her eyes. "When things make sense, and you can see them making sense, and you're just writing down why they make sense, it's sensical." She pointed at the pages. "You knew why your antidote made sense, you just had to get yourself out of the way first."

"It's never made_ this_ much sense before, though," Neville said, his eyes scanning over the symbols and numerals.

"Well, you connected two things that didn't go together before," Luna said, looking up from the tiny plait she was making of her long fringe. "And now they're smooshed together in your head and so they go together whenever you think them. That's what intelligence is, really; it's setting it up so that when you think of something, you think of all the other things that go with it, too." She unraveled the braid, studying it and not looking over at Neville as she did so. "You're very bright, but you've been stuffing your head with facts and figures and theories and haven't been a very good host. They're all wandering around with a drink, too shy to talk to one another." She looked up then, a small grin on her lips. "I'm here to help you introduce them."

She flipped a page in Neville's notes. "Agrippa's First Principle, meet the antidote for Doxy venom."

* * *

><p>Neville stared in trepidation at the line of vials on the table in the front of the room. Furtive glances revealed that the other seven Auror candidates in his seminar were also giving them less-than-friendly looks.<p>

The poisons themselves did not look all that threatening, in their tiny vials like that. They looked almost like perfume, all innocuous in their opalescent translucence.

Neville licked his lips, and jumped as their instructor strode into the room. Even in this well-lit potions lab, so different from the dungeon classroom he'd spent so many hours in, the opening of the door and entrance of the authority figure still made him nervous.

Audrey Carson was as unlike Severus Snape as it was possible to be, however: she was short, and given to generous proportions; her voice was thin and high and pleasant; she always had a good word to say about everyone's hard work, even if it was less than satisfactory. Today she stepped to the front of the room and beamed at them standing in a row.

"Well, it's good to see I didn't scare you all away," she said, and her eyes fell upon the vials on the desk. "You needn't worry about these; your first practical antidote is hardly going to be for anything deadly. Just embarrassing."

Neville wasn't sure this was an improvement.

"The goal today is to distract you from composing and brewing your antidote. If you can manage to think through the veil of distraction, then you are a far sight more capable than most potioneers. Now, normally I hardly have to tell you that interfering with each others' antidotes is frowned upon, but today will be particularly trying... so for that reason, you'll be in private laboratories, the doors for which are down that hall." She gestured to a hallway that had always been preceded by a locked door before. Neville's curiosity piqued; he'd never been to the private laboratories. "I will expect you to be able to brew this perfectly in a room filled with others by the end of this week, but today that expectation is quite impractical. Everyone, please take a vial, and do not imbibe it until you are in your cubicle. If you have not brewed a satisfactory antidote at the end of four hours, I will be around to administer one." There was a reluctant shuffle as everyone stepped forward to take a vial; it felt oddly warm in Neville's hand, especially for its size.

Stepping into the first open cubicle and closing the door firmly behind him, Neville took stock of his surroundings. No window, of course, but it was well-lit anyway, a white globe of light bobbing lazily near the ceiling. It was a narrow room, slightly larger than the average lavatory, black counters above drawers on the one one wall and ingredient cabinets built into the other. He had two cauldrons, the usual array of preparation tools, a burner and an ice slurry, a tap and sink, and the dreaded clipboard with the lined parchment where he would need to write his proof.

He took a deep breath, set down his bag, and uncorked the tiny vial.

The poison itself didn't do anything, which was unsurprising, but vapor began to rise from it in curlicue swirls quite independent of the air currents in the room. He racked his brain, trying to remember what would do that. Something tickled at the back of his mind but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Hesitantly, he brought the vial up to his face and wafted the vapors toward him.

It smelled... wonderful. He smiled slightly, an expression he hadn't expected to be using mere seconds before quaffing poison. Freshly turned mulch, wood smoke, and something vaguely reminiscent of mugwort, ginger, and citrus...

Something thunked heavily into place in his mind.

"Oh, _hell _no," he said, very loudly. He could swear he heard startled laughter in the next cubicle.

He stuck his head out the door, a very grim feeling settling over his chest. Carson was conversing quietly with another wizard Neville did not know; she excused herself from the conversation and came to see what Neville needed.

"Yes?" She asked.

"Ms. Carson," Neville said in as low a voice as he could manage; it seemed to echo in the hallway, and he was sure everyone could hear him. "I have a request."

"What is it?"

"Can you please lock my door from the outside?" He managed to keep a straight face, but could feel the flush crawling up his neck with impressive speed.

Carson looked amused. "Not your first encounter with this brew?"

Neville pressed his lips together and shook his head.

"Bad reaction?"

Neville grimaced and nodded. He wished he could make his cheeks stop burning.

"Well, I've diluted these samples a great deal, but your request is not unreasonable. I will lock your door as soon as it's closed."

"Thank you," he said, relief making the muscles in his lower back unclench. He hadn't known he was tensing them.

He closed the door with a quiet click, and outside he could hear Carson performing the locking enchantment. Neville pulled out his own wand and performed the same enchantment on the inside as well, for good measure.

That done, he looked back at the open vial in his hand. It no longer seemed so innocuous. He briefly considered brewing the antidote before taking the potion... but no, that would defeat the entire purpose of the exercise, and besides, he'd need to do this in front of people by the end of the week...

"Well," he said, steeling himself. "Bottoms up."

He threw back the potion in one gulp and closed his eyes as the warmth of the potion spread immediately straight through to his fingertips.


	4. Proofs

Amortentia was a hell of a potion.

The heart can move blood completely around the body in less than two minutes, but it took considerably less time than that for Neville to start falling into the spiral of primal lust that he was so unfortunately familiar with. He gritted his teeth together and tried his hardest to ignore the stirrings in his groin as he methodically pulled out the antidote ingredients he'd need.

Lust he could have dealt with handily. Well, not handily, this was neither the time nor place—oh god, yes, there it was, mind in the gutter already. Amortentia was _fast_.

Lust he could have _ignored_. Had ignored, in fact, rather well. It was when the potion started taking over the mind and making him think thoughts that were very unlike him, and also made him not care that they were unlike him—that was what was unsettling, once the potion worked its way through his system and he could reflect lucidly on his thoughts and actions.

Antidote. That's what he was here for. He blinked at the ingredients in front of him, trying to force himself to focus past the flood of images in his mind. He was relieved to find he could focus, in a broken-camera-lens sort of way that was mostly tunnel vision with a lot of interfering noise. Still, it was a damn sight better than he'd been anticipating.

All right. Amortentia was water-based;, it needed a water-based antidote. Agrippa's First Principle.

Luna had been absolutely brilliant, teaching him to apply principles like that. He could have kissed her. He _should_ have kissed her. He should go home, _right now_, find her and push her against the wall and kiss her for all he was worth, apply some principles of his own—

Water into the cauldron, just so. Pinch of salt to match the salinity of blood, there.

He bet she was a scratcher. Just something about her—

"Not the time!" he chastised himself aloud, blinking hard to try and clear his head. He started the flame beneath the cauldron to bring the water to a simmer.

He could draw her a bath when he got home. Nice hot bath, some bubbles—not too much, didn't want to cover anything up—

"One calendula flower, crushed," he forced himself to say loudly, focusing much harder on the somewhat wilted flower than he normally would have. It was precisely the color of Luna's hair, when it fell forward into her face as she leaned over from behind him to point out an error in his calculations, her breast brushing against his shoulder—

"Bloody hell," Neville muttered angrily. Swearing seemed to help slightly. He'd cursed rather impressively during his first encounter with the potion, a year ago, when it had been slipped into his drink at a party. Harry'd had to lock him up and talk him down for hours, tell him that, no, it was not a good idea for him to go find the brunette he'd glimpsed from across the room; no, that was not what the guest bedroom was intended for; hell no, Harry was not going to fetch aforementioned brunette and bring her there; _fuck_ no, Harry was not going to stand in for aforementioned brunette and Harry would hex him if he suggested it again. That was when Neville had reached into unprecedented depths of his vocabulary and had invented some new expletives before the potion started to wear off some seven hours later.

He tried to remember those now as he muttered a steady stream of obscenities, chopping a freeze-dried toad's heart into tiny cubes. Only a miniscule portion of his brain had retained relative sanity. He relied on it heavily to not only continually bring his mind back to what he was doing, but also to keep up the constant litany of _YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GO HOME AND DO ANYTHING TO LUNA, PARTICULARLY NOT THAT. YES, THAT, THAT THING YOU'RE THINKING OF RIGHT NOW. NOT THAT EITHER. NOR THAT. NOR THAT. THAT IS NOT EVEN PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE. NO, YOU CANNOT TRY IT JUST TO MAKE SURE._

He wasn't even sure how he'd managed to get all the ingredients in the correct order into the cauldron, but now that it was simmering he had forty minutes of absolutely nothing to occupy his mind.

Well, there was something that could occupy him, might even make him more comfortable—

_NO_, the tiny bit of rational Neville said, waving his arms in an imagined, exaggerated negative gesture, _YOU ARE NOT GOING TO WANK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC._

But it was nearly painful—

_DON'T CARE! _

The door is locked—

_DO NOT CARE! TERRIBLE IDEA! _

You know everyone else is doing it right now—

_DO. NOT. CARE. YOU. ARE. NOT._

It was _such_ a good thing this dose had been diluted, Neville reflected off in another, disconnected corner of his mind, which despite being disconnected was nevertheless making furtive plans to sneak into Luna's bedroom tonight and ask to see her hummingbird bruise. If he'd had a full dose, he was fairly sure he'd have broken down the door by now—he'd given Harry a black eye for standing in his way, before Harry had finally used a body-bind. Nobody really knew why Amortentia was so much more effective on virgins, but there it was, and he was slightly jealous that statistically, the rest of the candidates were probably having a much easier time of this task.

Oh, come now, surely Luna wouldn't be willing to do _that_. Yes, yes, she was certainly flexible enough, he'd had enough evidence of that, but—

He checked his watch, sighed heavily, and leaned against the wall. Three minutes had passed.

It was _definitely_ warm in here.

This was going to be a very long and uncomfortable forty minutes.

* * *

><p>He'd given up on all pretense of self-control, had removed his robes and jumper and untucked his shirt and had been about to go for the zip of his denims when the hourglass chimed, letting him know that the forty minutes was up. He was shaking and clammy with sweat as he hurriedly decanted a dose of the antidote and thrust the vial into the ice slurry to cool. The cold shock to his hand, holding it under the slurry, brought him slightly back to his senses. Very slightly. If Neville had to estimate, he would guess that the apogee of the potion's effectiveness was right about now, and the only thing that had kept him from racing to the Apparition point in the Ministry entrance five minutes ago had been the excellent locking charm Carson had performed. He'd dispelled his own locking charm twenty minutes prior when he'd decided that if he didn't go to Luna right that moment and profess his eternal devotion, followed by some very intense carnal affirmation of that devotion, he'd curl up and die right there on the spot. He still felt like he was going to die, of heartache and libido simultaneously, if he was locked in this room for one more second without her.<p>

He didn't really care if the antidote wasn't all the way cooled yet; it was the initial quenching that set it. He yanked the vial from the ice slurry, careless of splattering ice and water everywhere, and unstoppered it with shaking hands before tossing back his head and pouring the antidote down his throat.

Oh, Merlin's buggered _arse_, that was so much better.

The feeling of being overheated fled immediately, leaving him feeling slightly chilled. He shrugged his jumper and robes back on, pointedly denying he'd taken them off in the first place, feeling just a little weak and lightheaded as the antidote did its work. It was not exactly like slowly coming down off the effects like he'd done before: rather, he snapped back to himself in the space of a minute, dizzied and aching slightly in the groin and feeling somehow jilted. He also did not have the considerable span of time to come to terms with the wild fantasies his mind had concocted.

He grimaced, lowering his face into his hands and trying to massage the flush from his cheeks. Effing hell, how was he going to look Luna in the eye after all that? How was he going to face himself in the _mirror_ after all that? In a grand effort to avoid thinking about it, he hoisted himself up to sit on the counter, grabbed the clipboard and a quill, and after tearing away the top page of parchment which inexplicably had a very bad love poem scrawled on it, went to work on his proof.

It was somehow more difficult without Luna sitting above him on the couch, watching him sussing out reactions and catalysts and nulllifiers. He closed his eyes for a moment as he went through all eight of Agrippa's Principles, trying to see if one would apply to this particular step, and instead found himself imagining her, in mismatched socks and her yellow dressing gown, absently twining one bedraggled curl through her fingers, pale eyebrows raised expectantly as though patiently awaiting his answer. She'd say something encouraging, or something intended to jog his memory, and then she'd laugh delightedly when things would fall into place in his mind and he'd hastily bend back over the parchment to write down what he'd figured out before he lost it again. That laugh and smile was not the worst reward for his efforts. Just remembering it made him smile a bit himself, feel a happy warmth collect in his middle.

Hmm. Maybe his antidote hadn't been as thorough as his proof was making it out to be. Perhaps it really had needed the full five minutes of quenching in the ice slurry. Still, at least it wasn't the humiliating salaciousness of earlier. His cheeks started to burn slightly and he focused on the parchment and figures in front of him, trying to keep everything in tidy rows to keep track. Every time he finished a line and it looked like it worked, he imagined Luna briefly squeezing his shoulder, or treating him to one of her dreamy smiles. Even if it was the potion causing the thoughts—or perhaps because of it—he didn't feel at all guilty thinking of her this way. Of course, the lack of guilt was probably the potion, too, now that it wasn't pushing so forcefully against his natural inclination of far more modest behavior.

He stared down at the page in surprise. Even after having done this successfully several times yesterday, it was still a shock that he'd managed to do it here. And this time with no assistance. He was not used to feeling pride in himself when there were cauldrons involved. He rewrote his final line a little more legibly, underlined it, and set his quill down in satisfaction.

And, he thought, looking at his watch, he still had two and a half hours left. Which, it dawned on him with a sinking feeling, he'd be spending locked in this laboratory cubicle until Carson removed her locking enchantment. Seeing as how she'd been quite dutiful about ignoring his banging on the door earlier, he doubted knocking and calling for her would do any good.

He busied himself with tidying away everything he'd used: filling a flask with the antidote for any evaluation it needed and Vanishing the remainder, scrubbing out the empty cauldron, wiping the blade of the knife with a steaming cloth, dumping the ice slurry into the sink and wiping up any drips. This took him all of ten minutes and, desperately bored and quailing at the thought of spending another two hours and change locked in this room with daydreams of Luna intruding into his thoughts, he wrote the last line of his proof in large figures on a sheet of parchment and shoved it under the door.

After a few minutes of sitting on the counter and idly swinging his feet, there was a knock at the door.

"Finished already, Longbottom?"

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, hopping down and grabbing his clipboard. The door clicked as it opened and Carson cautiously entered the room. Neville wordlessly handed her the clipboard, trying not to smile too widely as he did so. She glanced it up and down, her eyebrows climbing upwards in surprise.

"This is very neat work, Longbottom. A remarkable improvement compared to past attempts. And an inspired antidote, as well." She flipped the page up to study his last few lines. "Quite impressive. I must admit myself slightly shocked at the high caliber of your work today, not to mention the speed." She lowered her voice and there was a tiny amused glint to her eye. "When you asked me to lock your door I thought for sure you were going to be one of the ones needing, ah, rescuing. Especially since the potion was untargeted, and would allow you to become... preoccupied... with the likeliest person your mind decided upon, which usually makes the effects stronger." Her voice returned to its normal volume. "But you seem to have exceptional resolve and self-control. You're the first to complete an antidote so far, and it looks to be a good one." She drew a small silver pin from her belt pouch and held it up. "There is, however, only one way to tell for certain."

Neville nodded, the glowing feeling her praise stoked within him making the pinprick on his finger hardly worth noticing. The tiny drop of his blood levitated at the behest of Carson's wand, sparkled iridescently for a moment, and then vanished. Carson nodded in a satisfied manner, a pleased smile on her face as she Vanished the silver pin as well.

"Completely clean. Very well done, Longbottom. You ought to be proud of yourself."

Neville frowned. He _was_ proud of himself, but that could wait a moment— "Ms. Carson, are you sure? I'm nearly positive I didn't quench it long enough."

Carson nodded briskly. "There are no traces of the potion left in your system, not even any unbound principles floating around, which I'd normally expect from someone's first practical antidote." Her eyes twinkled in knowing amusement then, wrinkling slightly at the corners with a smile that only barely touched her lips. "Any thoughts you're having right now are completely your own, and have absolutely nothing to do with the potion." She clapped him jovially on the shoulder. "Unless you have any additional questions, you're free to go. I'll see you tomorrow — and, as a warning, the potion won't be as diluted the second time around."

Neville chose to ignore this last, as his brain was already processing something vastly more important.

All evidence indicated that, when it came down to it, he apparently really _did_ fancy Luna. Imagine that.

* * *

><p>Luna was not home when he stepped into the house, dripping sleet on the tile in the entryway as he kicked off his shoes and wriggled out of his cloak. He muttered a halfhearted "<em>dessico<em>" and his shoes dried immediately, but he was still going to be cold and miserable until he bundled himself up in front of the fire. He really must remember that the Apparition point he typically used was under eighteen inches of very cold rain and sleet at this time of year.

He shivered his way through the house, first prodding at the kettle in the kitchen to start some water boiling, then stoking the coals in the wood stove in the sitting room, and finally stumping upstairs to change out of his customary collared shirt and denims, the latter of which were still freezing even after the drying spell. Flannel pyjama bottoms were just about all he could muster himself to pull on right now, that and a Gryffindor Quidditch jumper he was fairly sure belonged to either Harry or Ron. He stepped into his ratty old house shoes, falling apart despite whatever stitching spells he used to cobble them back together, and made his way back downstairs.

The fire was crackling happily in the stove and he settled himself in front of it on the rug, still shivering despite the blanket he drew around him, his hands wrapped around his cup of tea and the teapot sitting atop the stove to keep warm. He hated this bloody weather. It could either be cold, or it could be wet, but did it have to be both? Couldn't it maybe take it in turns?

He heard the doorknob turn and his heart skipped a beat. He turned to look over his shoulder and watched with a vague sort of smile as Luna slipped into the entryway, her blue cloak setting off her blond hair beautifully. She'd tied it into a knot, presumably to keep it out of her face, or perhaps to have somewhere to store her wand. Luna had never much been one for pockets.

She turned to the sitting room and her face lit up. "Neville! You said you wouldn't be home until six!"

Neville's chest warmed slightly when she said his name. Blimey, how dense could he have possibly been? Of course he fancied her. How had that even been in question? "I finished my antidote early. I got to leave early as a reward." She was removing her dripping cloak as he spoke, and had made her way into the sitting room.

"Spectacular," she declared as she folded herself gracefully onto the rug next to him. "And your proof?"

Neville resisted the urge to put his arm around her and pull her close. He'd puzzled out _his_ feelings, not hers — and hers were the far more perplexing half of the equation. "I think Carson suspected I was a completely different pupil. She seemed absolutely baffled."

Luna clapped in delight. "You see? And that was only a few hours of me haranguing you. Before long you won't have any use for me at all. What poison did you have to counter?"

Neville coughed. "Um. It wasn't a poison, actually. Just a potion that made it hard to think clearly." He drew the blanket closely around him, staring into the fire to avoid meeting her eyes.

There was a moment of silence during which Neville fervently hoped she wouldn't ask him which potion it was. "Are you cold?" she asked, apparently just noticing his efforts to warm himself.

Neville nodded. "Apparated into that great puddle at the bottom of the lane. If it's going to be this cold, you'd think it would have the decency to snow. At least snow is pretty."

"It's going to, later this week," Luna said. Neville finally dared to glance over at her. Her head was cocked slightly to one side, and she was studying the flames in the stove as they leaped about. "You can tell because the trees are shuddering. I've just come from the market, I was going to surprise you with pheasant soup, but now you're home so it won't be a surprise. You'll still act surprised, though, won't you? I did so want to surprise you."

Neville smiled. "I haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about, or why you're going to disappear into the kitchen."

"Oh, good." Luna beamed as she pushed herself to standing. "It won't be long, and it's perfect for when it's cold out. My mum used to make it, with lots of garlic to keep vampires away. It's also good for attracting Wollymogs, and this place could definitely use some." And with that indecipherable comment, she skipped off to the kitchen, humming to herself. Neville watched her go with amusement. There were times when she seemed so... well, almost normal, relatively speaking, and then she'd suddenly be the whimsical teenager he knew so well from school.

His face fell slightly. Certainly, he could claim he knew her well. Even after her months of absence these past few years, she remained his closest friend, not only the easiest to talk with but also the easiest to sit in silence with. But how could he claim to know her so well when he couldn't puzzle out whether she actually felt anything for him beyond friendship? He could read into things any which way he pleased, but when he was honest with himself, she wasn't really acting any differently toward him. She'd always delighted in doing something unexpected to surprise him, always seemed genuinely pleased whenever he was around. The only thing that had really changed was how _he_ felt about it all, the longing to draw her close against him and bury his face in the pale curls, to have her in his arms and be able to give in to the desire for it to be more than a platonic embrace.

He could hear her singing to herself as she moved about the kitchen — some tuneless, nonsensical thing about summoning Wollymogs. He didn't even know what Wollymogs were, but he was sure that, in that instant, he'd have fetched her a baker's dozen if it would make her happy.


	5. String Theory

Walking into Weasley's Wizard Wheezes was a bit like falling headfirst into a can of glowing orange paint.

This late in the evening the store was mostly deserted, but it still felt rather claustrophobic and busy, with movement in every direction that caused Neville to whip his head around somewhat nervously. He tended to get anxious in closed-in spaces with lots of movement and sudden noises.

As he rounded a column of Vanishing Cauldrons, a vivacious young witch in orange robes looked up from the till. "Hello!" She chirped. "Can I help you find anything? Fever Fudge is currently buy one, get two free!"

"Actually, I was checking to see if Ron Weasley was in," Neville said, ducking as a Fanged Frisbee lazily swooped past him.

"Sure, let me get him." She disappeared for a moment, and when she returned, Ron was trailing behind, holding a clipboard and looking slightly harried.

"All right, Neville?" Ron asked, looking slightly bemused as he tossed the clipboard on the counter.

"All right, Ron," Neville responded. He attempted to make his tone casual. "Was wondering if I could treat you to a drink when you're done for the day."

This only compounded the look of confusion on the redhead's face. Neville knew from where it stemmed: he and Ron were more friends by association with Harry and Hermione than mates themselves. Neville could count on the fingers of one hand how many instances he and Ron had spent any appreciable time together with no one else around and still have enough fingers left over to hold a quill.

Curiosity seemed to get the better of Ron, however, and he shrugged. "I can be done now. In fact, if I'm not done now I may go upstairs and strangle George. He's put me in charge of inventory this week, which is a nice trick when half the lot in the shop vanishes when you get too close, or turns into something else entirely."

"Leaky Cauldron, then?" Neville asked. Ron shrugged.

"Sure. Let me get my cloak."

The walk down the lane to the Leaky Cauldron was punctuated by the characteristic awkward quiet of two people who know each other, but not well. The cold midwinter air was convenient, as they could huddle in amongst their scarves and hats and feign being too cold to properly talk rather than cast about for conversation topics, but once they had settled inside the Leaky Cauldron and had been served a twice-mulled mead apiece, there was no further excuse for silence.

"So... what's new?" Ron asked.

"Not much," Neville answered. "Practical antidotes this week. Did you take Antidotes before you left for the shop?" Ron shook his head. "You're lucky. I've got to brew an antidote for Amortentia – while under its influence."

Ron let out a low whistle. "That's intense. Especially as I've seen you with Amortentia in your system."

Neville coughed. He'd forgotten Ron had been witness to that particular incident. Really, he'd tried to forget a lot of that experience. "Any road, it was diluted the first day, and the second day, but yesterday and today it was nearly full strength. I think I'm still shaking off the effects. Brutal, that potion is."

Ron nodded in commiseration. "I've only ever been on the wrong end of Fred's Aphrodite's Affair potion, which was bad enough, let me tell you."

Neville raised an eyebrow. "Why was Fred giving you love potions?"

Ron shot him a disgusted look. "He didn't, you twit. Someone bought it from the shop and tried to get Harry with it, and got me instead. You remember the whole poison fiasco sixth year, yeah?"

Neville nodded, and a lot of things began making sense. "So – who was trying to get Harry?"

Ron winced. "Romilda Vane."

Neville shuddered. "Should have been a Slytherin, that one. Did you know she tried to get me to smuggle something into Harry's bed? Promised to kiss me if I did it." Neville look a long draft of his mead. "Not that it wasn't tempting, dating options being a little thin on the ground."

"Really?" Ron asked, looking up from his flagon. "I thought you and Luna..."

Neville bit his lip and considered before answering. "Everyone thought me and Luna, except apparently me and Luna." He took a deep breath. "Actually... that's why I've asked you here."

Ron's eyebrows lifted in an "ah" expression. "Trying to get cozy, is she?" he asked in a pitying tone.

Neville blinked. "What? No." He took a long sip, ignoring that the spices near the bottom of the flagon were particularly strong. "Other way round, actually."

Ron's face immediately changed from amused empathy to sly. "Is it, now? Well, then, that's different."

"_So_ glad it's only annoying if she's doing it to me," Neville said drily. "You've made broaching the subject to her much less nerve-wracking. I think I'll go kill myself now."

"Hey, now," Ron interjected., "Don't – it's just – she's Luna. It'd take a... different sort of person to really mesh with Luna." He grimaced as Neville arched an eyebrow over the brim of his flagon. "You know what? Pretend I didn't say anything. Go on."

Neville swallowed, decided to take the peace offering for what it was. "Believe me, I'd be doing cartwheels if she was showing any indication of wanting to be 'cozy.' But she's not, and..." He seemed to run out of words for this particular thought, and he stared into the depths of his empty flagon for a moment, contemplating the soggy spices at the bottom. "How'd you know Hermione would be... receptive? That she saw you as more than a best friend?"

Ron cleared his throat. "Um, probably about the time she jumped on me and started snogging me, actually." Neville stared blankly. "Or at least, that's when I knew. I was up your creek for a year before that. Wondering, you know? Deciding to do something, and then second-guessing, because it'd be awful if I'd gotten it wrong."

"But... all sixth year, after you and Lavender broke it off..."

Ron smirked. "It's obvious from the outside, isn't it? It's obvious looking back, too. In the thick of it though... although I don't need to tell you that."

Neville nodded a little forlornly. "Wish I knew what to do about it. I'd hate to ruin a friendship. It's one of the last I've got, now that everyone else is pairing off."

Ron shifted. "You should probably be asking Hermione about this," he said in an uncomfortable tone. "She's a lot better at this sort of thing."

Neville shook his head emphatically. "I know you love her. And she's a good friend. But you and I both know that she would never, ever, _ever_ let this lie, and she'd probably take things into her own hands 'for my own good.'"

"You're not wrong," Ron said with a sheepish grin.

"And Harry... stuff just _happens_ to Harry. I don't think he's actually agonized over a decision in his life." Neville sighed heavily. Silence stretched between them for several moments.

Ron shrugged. "I think you should just go for it."

Neville's head popped up from soul-searching the dregs of his mead. "Really?"

"Yeah. If you love her, isn't it worth the risk?"

"Woah. Wait just a second." Neville wished he had more mead so he could drink it and buy himself more time to marshal his thoughts. "I never said I loved her. Just that..." Ron arched an eyebrow, but didn't say anything. Neville wished he would so that he'd have something different to respond to. "She's all I can think about," Neville admitted, mumbling a fair bit more than he should have. "But that's probably because I spend several hours a day now under the influence of a potion that enforces that." He could feel the spots of color rise in his cheeks; he'd really have to learn how to control that. "Carson – the Antidotes instructor – she keeps saying that once the potion's nullified, everything you feel for the... object of attention... is nullified as well. I think she's barmy. You can't spend hours obsessed with a person and not feel anything for them once you're done."

Ron coughed. "Actually, you can," he said rather pointedly. "Matter of fact, I still feel a bit ill thinking about what was going through my mind about Romilda."

That brought Neville up short. "But you didn't like Romilda to begin with."

Ron nodded. "And I went straight back to not liking her the minute Slughorn gave me the antidote. Trust me; potions do mad things to your brain, but when they let go, they let go. I don't remember you determined to marry that cow who dosed you at the party, do you?" He grinned at the expression this wrought. Neville hadn't considered that. "I think you're obsessed with her all on your own. Luna, that is. Not the party girl."

"I got that far," Neville said faintly. He shook his head. "I can't be in..." It sounded so ridiculous to say such a storybook phrase, almost embarrassing. "I'm just... infatuated. And ruining a friendship for infatuation is a terrible, terrible idea."

Ron looked very seriously at him. "I'm not sure exactly what you want from me," he said slowly. "Am I to talk you out of it, or into it?"

"I don't know," Neville said with an explosive sigh. "I'm going crazy. I keep thinking I should do something, but I don't know what. And I can't get her out of my mind." He swirled the dregs around in his flagon. "Most people think she's childish," he said, almost quietly enough for it to be to himself, "But she's not, it's... innocence. She refuses to be jaded by the world, and that gives her a kind of... immunity, I guess." He could feel his brow furrow, and he was fairly sure that on his empty stomach, the mead had gone straight to his head. He kept talking anyway. It felt good to put things into words. "I don't think she realizes how beautiful she is, or that anyone could desire her in that way. But she's brilliant, and witty, and she can light up a room just by being there, and when she smiles it's like a perfectly tuned bell ringing..."

A loud pop from the fireplace jolted him from his mead-tinged reverie, and he looked up, slightly abashed, at his drinking partner. Ron was staring at him, completely nonplussed.

"Are we talking about the same Luna?" he asked. "Because, no offense, the one I know is just a titch on the mental side."

Neville chuckled. "There's a bit of that, too. But that's who she is. She's mental and beautiful and brilliant and I'm..." He wanted to try out the phrase, but he couldn't make himself say it, and instead lost himself in the wood grain of the table.

Ron pushed his flagon away from him and folded his hands in front of him on the table in a businesslike manner. "You know what, Neville? You're all right. You're a decent guy, and we manage to get on. So to hell with what your original intent was, bringing me along tonight." He waited until Neville raised his eyes, curious, and then leaned forward. "You're arse over elbows in love with the woman. If she's really your friend, she won't hate you for trying to make it something more, and you'll be miserable if you never try. Do it."

* * *

><p>It was hardly more than a shoe string, and nearly as manky, but as soon as Neville's eyes had lit upon it, shoved in a corner of the shelf in his room, he knew that it was exactly what he needed.<p>

He sat cross-legged on his bed, staring at the cat's cradle as his fingers automatically remembered the patterns. If he thought too hard, he'd lose the flow, but by not thinking, the muscle memory of childhood took over.

He was used to being alone, as his mastery of the solitary cat's cradle attested to. Growing up, there had been no neighbor children to play with, no cousins or younger aunts or uncles that everyone else had seemed to have. Gran was not much one for affection and there had been few examples of how people who loved each other behaved. It was lonely, perhaps, but he had no frame of reference, no way to know what he was missing.

Things hadn't been much different at Hogwarts. While he now had magic and homework to replace silly Muggle string games, he still spent most of his time alone. In the corner of the common room, reading a book and furtively watching other people forge friendships. In the greenhouses, reveling in finally being good at something but finding he had no one to share it with but Professor Sprout. The difference now was that he could see all around him what he was missing, but everyone else already seemed to have auditioned and found their friends already. He was the outsider, but really, that was all right – he was used to it.

Everything had changed when he'd met Luna.

She'd simultaneously been everything he'd ached for: friend, sister, companion. She was as solitary as he, but thrived in it and made the solitude her own, and now they could be solitary together. She'd been the first soul he'd told about his parents. He'd been the first – and only, as far as he knew – to whom she'd confided she didn't really believe in nargles, but it was fun to pretend and watch the reactions of others. When the whispers of rumored romance began to follow them, she had only shrugged and commented about how a lot of people like to pretend to see things that weren't there, because it made life more interesting. Even when she'd appeared to be deep in thought or daydream in the library, she always seemed to know when he was approaching, and would always extend her daydream to include him. That might mean telling him in depth about the cloud formation she'd spotted out the window, or it might just be sitting in companionable silence.

There had always been the understanding that, even sitting at different House tables for meals, with different class loads and different schedules, they might be solitary – but they would never be truly alone.

Neville's thumb slipped. He untangled the loop of string and began again.

He wondered when it had come about, this vast feeling within his chest that Ron had so effectively uncloaked. He couldn't remember _not_ feeling it, but couldn't remember actually feeling it, being conscious of it. Had it crept in under the guise of the chill horror he'd felt, when he got the news that Luna had been kidnapped from the Hogwarts Express? Had it camouflaged itself with the relief he'd felt when he'd received her letter some time later, letting him know she was safe? Or had it been earlier? Had it sparked when Luna had asked for assistance studying for her Herbology O.W.L., during the hours they'd spent alone in the greenhouses? The first time he'd produced a Patronus, practicing with her in the Room of Requirement after everyone else had left? He'd never cast one that solid again, not even in Auror training. She was the only other person in the world who knew what form it took.

"Infatuation is what the potion makes you feel," Ron had said after ordering another round of twice-mulled mead for the two of them. "What you're feeling is probably quite a bit deeper. Makes you relax when you think of her, not get anxious. You don't think so much of snogging her as holding her, forever. You just want to be around her, even if you're doing nothing but sitting together. Any of this ringing any bells?"

Oh, it had rung bells. Giant, pealing clock tower bells.

They'd parted ways, slightly unsteady on their feet, making well-intentioned promises to get together more often. Ron had done a decent job convincing him that he should just throw the dice and reveal everything to Luna. Neville had had every intention of doing so when he'd opened the front door, had even rehearsed the words, and then he'd seen her sitting on the couch, curled up around a book with a gray leather cover, her little finger hooked over her lower lip, and the words that had been on the tip of his tongue suddenly sounded astoundingly idiotic. This was going to take much more than a few seconds of mead-inspired planning.

She hadn't looked up from her book, engrossed as she was – that was one of the things about her that fascinated him, the way she could tune out the rest of the world when something enthralled her – and he'd slipped up the stairs to his bedroom, run his hands through his hair, seen his old cat's cradle on the shelf, and now he was here.

The words still sounded idiotic. Trouble was, he couldn't think of any others. It was possible that, like the string game twined around his fingers, thinking too hard about it made it impossible.

There was a soft knock at his door and his heart skipped a beat as he looked up from the string. "Yes?" he asked. The door opened and Luna slipped in. Neville threw a nervous look at the pile of laundry next to his bed, but Luna didn't seem to notice it.

"I heard you come in," she said. "I was in the middle of a very mesmerizing passage, and if I looked away I was going to lose the whole flow of the thing, but when I finished you had come up here, so I thought maybe you wanted to be alone."

Neville blinked. "Oh – not exactly," he said a bit lamely. "I just didn't want to disturb you."

"Oh, okay." Luna stepped over to his bed and leaned over and for a wild moment Neville thought she was going to embrace him and he wondered what to do with the cat's cradle. But then she expertly pinched the two intersections of the crosses in the string, brought them around and underneath the outer bordering loops, and lifted the whole thing effortlessly off of Neville's hands, stretching it into the next pattern in the sequence. Neville stared, dumbfounded, as Luna offered him the new pattern.

"I – don't exactly know what to do," he admitted. "I've never had a partner before." He was painfully aware of how the statement exactly echoed his current state of mind.

"Just pinch the x's," Luna said helpfully, "And then bring them up and under and around. Like I did."

Neville reached out, proud that he was keeping his hands from shaking, and mimicked Luna's earlier motion, lifting the tangle of string from her hands as the loops slid past each other and formed the next pattern. Grinning widely, Luna hooked her little fingers around the string, twisted her other fingers just so, and took the tangle from Neville. They passed the string back and forth, Neville finally allowing the grin to spread across his face as they did so.

"I always thought this was a Muggle children's game," he said, drawing the string tight.

"It is," Luna said, pinching the intersections again. "My dad taught it to me, when I was very small. I've not played it for ages, though. It takes two people with very nimble fingers who know the patterns."

"I always played it by myself. Kept my hands busy. I can teach you, if you'd like."

Luna cocked her head to the side. "I think I like the one with a partner better. It almost seems like you're building something together that way." She looked down to contemplate the string on her hands. "Imagine how many miles of string we've gone through just now, building this moment."

Neville felt something flutter in his chest as he smiled shyly. "Luna, you never fail to astonish me."

"Good," Luna said lightly, unwinding the string from around her fingers, folding it, and placing it carefully in Neville's hand. She folded his fingers over it. "That means you'll never get bored of me. Good night, Neville." She pecked a quick kiss on his forehead and before he could react, had flitted out the door and closed it gently behind her.


	6. Games

Friday dawned cold and bright, the sky a bland slate gray that nevertheless threatened snow. The thermometer on the window in the kitchen read several degrees below freezing and Neville determined that today would be an excellent day to stoke the fire in the stove in the sitting room and never, ever leave it again. He thanked his lucky stars Friday was an independent study day, because after opening the door and summoning nearly the entire woodpile to the back stoop, he was certain he'd never have been able to convince himself to go outdoors, not even for the short walk down to the Apparition point.

He groaned when he looked in the kitchen cupboards. He'd been too busy cleaning to get to the shops last week, and they were down to porridge, a few tins of beans, very old spaghetti noodles, and a half-empty jar of peanut butter. The icebox did not fare any better, containing only a stick of butter and a single lonely egg in an otherwise empty carton. He could technically make more eggs, but he'd been copying this egg for the last week and he could tell it was starting to wear out.

The sudden appearance of blond hair in the corner of his eye made him jerk, in turn banging the back of his head on the inside of the icebox. Eyes watering and rubbing his head, he turned.

"I was going to go to the shop today," Luna said happily, "As it's been me who's eaten all the food. Is there anything you want, or should I guess?"

"How are you so silent?" Neville demanded. "I swear you sneak around like a... like a..."

"Skaven?" Luna suggested. "East Highlands Arbor Nymph? Arctic Hengewick?"

"Sure," Neville said, shaking his head and smiling. "Whichever of those is the prettiest." He nearly swallowed his tongue. What had possessed him to say that?

"That'd be the nymph, then," Luna said winsomely. "They're known to lure male travelers into their wood for sport. There are only female nymphs, you know, and they need to steal human males to reproduce."

"Ah," Neville said, suddenly feeling very nervous at the odd turn this conversation had taken. "Right then. Um. Eggs? And bacon? And jam and bread."

Luna peered keenly at him. "Is that all you eat?" she asked, blessedly dropping the previous topic. Neville shrugged.

"Usually? I'm terrible in the kitchen. I've set fire to a fair few things."

Luna sighed extravagantly. "You're just like Daddy. Pastrami and pickles, every day. I don't know how you can stand it, it's so boring, like being a cat." She stood on tiptoe to peek into one of the cupboards. "Have we any flour? I want to bake something. It's a beautiful day for ginger biscuits, don't you think?"

Neville nearly laughed aloud. "I don't think we've had flour since Gran left. Or ginger. Or anything else you'll need for ginger biscuits."

"You've got sugar," Luna pointed out. "And salt."

"For tea and eggs. I think the most complicated thing I've attempted in here was pancakes. And that didn't end well."

"Did it end in pancakes?" Luna asked shrewdly.

"Barely."

"I'd say it ended all right then." She studied the contents of another cupboard intently. "Things almost never end the way we think they will. That doesn't mean they don't end well, even if people often make that mistake." She nodded in satisfaction at something. "All right, I think I know what I'm going to get. Do you want to come along? You can be the gentleman that carries my parcels and offers me your cloak because I've forgotten mine."

"Were you... planning on forgetting your cloak?" Neville asked, glancing once more at the iced-over windows.

"Only if there was going to be a nice gentleman to loan me his," Luna responded with an impish smile. "And then I'd forget I had it and go home, and he'd have to chase me down to find it, only to discover that I've been kidnapped in some nefarious plot and, as the last person to see me, he's honor-bound to find me and bring me home safely."

Neville smiled, falling easily into his part in the "what if" game they'd played so often in the past. "And what if the bloke decides to just buy a new cloak when he can't find you? What happens then?"

"Oh, I don't think he'd do that," Luna said absently, running her fingers along the back of a kitchen chair. "He'd be worried about me, you see, because he recognizes me. He used to play with me as a child, and didn't realize it until he heard my surname while he was searching for me."

"I see." Neville ignored his grumbling stomach; it had been far too long since he'd played this game with her, and he was surprised to find how much he'd missed it. "So say he's found where the kidnappers are keeping you. He's got plenty of bravery to spare, but his wand has snapped along the way. Probably when he was wrestling the guards outside."

"Both of them?" Luna asked.

"At once. Probably not his brightest idea, but after all, you're inside. He's having a bit of trouble thinking straight." He coughed. "He really wants his cloak back."

"As he should, it's a marvelous cloak. So dark blue you think it's black, and a permanent Impervius charm on the wool."

"A man of means, to afford a cloak like that." Neville knew exactly how much one cost. His was hanging in the entryway at that moment. He'd had to replace the one he'd received as a seventeenth birthday present after it had been destroyed during his seventh year.

"Clearly. But you were telling me how he wrestled the guards outside."

"Oh, well, he Disarmed them without much trouble, but then they came at him. Big, beefy blokes. But what they didn't know was he used to be Special Forces with the Ministry, and he was fully trained in hand-to-hand combat."

"I have quite the champion on my side," Luna murmured. "I suppose that's why everyone inside fled when he burst into the room, like an avenging angel. It looked quite impressive, you know."

"I'm sure. So he's rescued you from... was it certain doom?"

"Boredom, really," Luna said reflectively. "They wouldn't untie me to let me do anything, and none of them would read to me, and all they did was argue about what they were going to do with me. They didn't really think this whole thing through, you know."

"All right, he's rescued you from certain boredom, at least. He whisks you away, back to the tea shop where you first met, and he looks deeply into your eyes... and he asks for his cloak back."

"And I'll tell him we'll have to go back to my flat, as I've left it there." Luna shot him a look through her lashes that was almost—but not quite—overtly seductive, and Neville had to swallow. This game had taken an interesting turn, one that he didn't think he was entirely prepared for. At some point they'd sat down at the table, looking intently across at one another as they verbally fenced.

Just then, a gust of wind hit the house hard enough to make the kitchen window rattle against its catch. Neville jumped, but Luna just looked over calmly.

"Hmm," she said thoughtfully. "Maybe it's foolish of me to forget my cloak, regardless of the adventures it may lead to." She stood gracefully. "I'm afraid this is where I take my leave, Mr. Longbottom, unless you care to join me as I go about my day."

Neville shook his head regretfully. "I really should use the time to study more. My proofs have gotten better, but they've been for simple poisons so far—and our actual practicum is going to be much more complex. I've got to practice factoring and reducing a dozen different ingredients."

"I'll help you with that when I get home," Luna promised. "Raspberry?"

Neville blinked. "Sorry?"

"Jam."

"Oh. Raspberry is fine."

"All right." She turned to head to the entryway, but paused to look over her shoulder. "It's a shame he never got to go to her flat," she said in a contemplative sort of tone. "Who knows what could have happened."

"To be continued, then," Neville said, his heart doing an odd sort of two-step on his ribs. Luna beamed.

"Perhaps." Without another word, she slipped through the doorway.

Neville let out a great sigh. Well. That had been... illuminating. He just wasn't sure what it had illuminated.

* * *

><p>Twilight was playing at the edges of the afternoon, and the promised snow had begun to fall thickly, when Luna returned home. As the door opened and snow swirled into the entryway, Neville resisted the urge to demand where she'd been — he was not her keeper, after all, but he was still oddly relieved to see that the cloak she was wearing was still her own.<p>

"It's snowing," she called to him from the kitchen as she was setting down her various parcels.

"I'd noticed," Neville called back, not lifting his eyes from his parchment. This last equation was ridiculous and, in his opinion, completely unnecessary. Its only purpose in life was to torment him. He'd already used a foot of parchment and couldn't see a way to reduce it any further, not without using a second catalyzing agent, but he'd already come up against the safe limit for that ingredient, and any additional heat would denature the dragon's blood into uselessness and turn the antidote itself into a fairly dangerous poison...

He could hear Luna putting groceries away in the kitchen and he glared angrily at the parchment before looking up. "Can you use any help?" he called.

"Oh, no, I've got it. Can you?"

Neville looked back at the parchment. "Probably."

Luna appeared in the sitting room a few minutes later, cheeks red from the cold outside and bearing two cups of tea. "I would have been home earlier, but I ran into Lakshmi Gardner at the tea shop. You probably don't remember her — she was a year below me in Ravenclaw. She has the most extraordinary eyelashes. They're very long and very dark, and she doesn't charm them at all. She works for Witch Weekly now, and when she found out I was living with you, she wanted to know if I'd be willing to do an interview."

Neville's stomach plummeted. "And you said?" he asked, trying to keep his voice light.

"Oh, I'm very bad at interviews. I told her I couldn't possibly, and besides, she probably wouldn't get the sort of answers she wanted anyway. I think she thinks you and I are much more intimate than we are." She shrugged dismissively, which made Neville's stomach do a funny sort of shiver, somewhere between disappointment and embarrassment. Luna handed Neville one of the teacups. "She did recommend this tea, though. It's supposed to be wonderful for concentration. I thought of you when she pointed it out. Not that you have any trouble concentrating, but it might be good to build up a store of it, for when you're poisoned and having trouble thinking straight."

Neville smiled somewhat crookedly. "I don't think it works that way. Besides, after this last week, I think I could have my arm off and not be distracted."

"That's good," Luna said sincerely. "You've always been very determined. I hope they don't take your arm off, though, because then you'd be very unbalanced, and it'd throw your body mass calculations off, and you know how important those are for antidotes. Although, if they do have your arm off, don't let them take your wand arm."

"I'll encourage them to take my right arm," Neville promised. He gestured at his parchment with a quill. "I'm stuck. I can't get it to reduce any further."

Luna knelt down next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder for balance. It felt very warm, and the warmth seemed to spread from it into his body, though he himself hadn't felt cold until that instant. At the same time, heat bloomed inside his chest and expanded. Unconsciously, he inhaled—citrus, ginger, and mugwort. Perhaps it was her shampoo.

"You're done," Luna declared, shifting to sit cross-legged next to him. She removed her hand, which left a cold spot on his shoulder where it had sat.

"I can't be," Neville protested. "There are about a half dozen ingredients that still need nullifying."

Luna crinkled her brow. "Have you gone over Cliodna yet?" Neville shook his head. "Not terribly surprising. She only briefly came up in my seventh year N.E.W.T. class. Her laws are terribly complex, but they deal with the body's metabolism of poisons." She pointed at seven of the ingredients, the ones that had been troubling him so. "If these are unbound from their delivery reagents, as you've done in this step here, the body can metabolize them harmlessly on its own—but only once they're unbound, which is why you need the antidote."

"So I'm done," Neville stated, still dubious.

"You're done. You worked it all out on your own." She smiled at him, and he couldn't help but smile back. "You see? You don't need me at all."

"That's not true," Neville said quickly. "I don't know where I'd be without you."

Luna smiled faintly. "That's nice, but I'm sure you'd be just fine on your own." She stood, taking her teacup with her. "After all, you'll have to cope somehow when I leave for Australia."

Neville swallowed. "You... don't have to go, you know. You could stay here." _With me_, he was too cowardly to add.

Luna shook her head. "Oh, no, that wouldn't do at all. I've already told Dad I'd write him an article about foreign pixie populations, and he particularly wants to know about the ones that migrated with the Muggle prisoners to Australia. Besides, I'm disrupting the natural order of things here."

"I don't mind."

"Oh, I know you say that, but that's because you're my friend and you're supposed to. I'm not enough of a roommate to cross the threshold of 'house guest,' and everyone wants their house guests to leave eventually, even if they're quite fond of them." She ruffled Neville's hair, a remarkably familiar gesture that sent gooseflesh down his back and arms. Without another word, she wandered off into the kitchen — presumably to get another cup of tea, or to begin her ginger biscuits.

"What if I'm more than fond?" he asked very quietly, now that she couldn't hear. "Would you stay then?"

She didn't answer, of course. Neville sighed heavily and began straightening his things.

* * *

><p>Darkness had fully stolen the evening an hour later, pressing black against the windows. The lamps illuminated the sitting room in a warm orange light. Neville twitched the curtain side and made a face. "It's still coming down out there. It'll be two feet by morning."<p>

"I think it's cozy," Luna declared, plopping herself into the window seat with a mug of cocoa and a freshly- made ginger biscuit. The entire house smelled of them now. "In here, anyway. Probably not out there."

"No, probably not," Neville agreed. He pointed his wand at the wood stove and the flames leaped slightly higher in response. He'd have to bring in some more firewood; magical flames were bright enough, he supposed, but actual flames were warmer and kept going even when everyone had fallen asleep.

"Come sit with me," Luna said, patting next to her on the window seat. Neville raised an eyebrow. "Come and watch the snow. It's pretty."

Neville hesitated, then sat down carefully on the window seat with his back against the wall, knees drawn to his chest. Luna beamed at him and turned to look out the window again. "It's a good thing we don't have wendigos here. This is the perfect weather for them."

Neville fought with himself for a moment, and then gave in. "Wendigos?"

Luna nodded. "They wander in the snowy north in America and consume people's souls, but each time they do, they get bigger, and so they're always starving. People who are overpowered by greed attract them the most, and once their soul is gone, they're never satiated, and they become a wendigo themselves. They're really rather frightening. I was lucky to get away." She took a long sip of her cocoa.

"Wait, so they're..." Neville brought himself up short.

"Real? Real as dementors are. But they don't make you unhappy when they're near — they cause you to become consumed with greed and excess. A wendigo could lurk near a community and make it rip itself to shreds, and then feast at will." Luna plucked a thread from her robe and watched it fall to the carpet. She didn't seem to notice that she'd made Neville shiver slightly. "Muggles think they're just cannibals," she added mildly.

"You've seen a lot," Neville managed to say, staring out into the swirling snow. He was suddenly quite conscious of how close to her he had to sit to avoid falling off the bench.

"Yes," Luna agreed. "My articles are really very popular. I've even sold some to magazines other than the Quibbler." She gazed dreamily out the window.

It was silent for a few moments; the fire crackled in the stove as a log shifted. Thinking of the fire, Neville realized just how cold he was.

"I think you've picked the coldest place in the house to sit," he pointed out as he wrapped his arms around his legs.

"It is, a bit," Luna reflected. Before Neville could suggest they move to the couch, she'd drawn her wand—brushing her arm against Neville's knee as she did so, summoning gooseflesh that had absolutely nothing to do with the cold—and called, "_Accio_!"

A bright patchwork quilt soared down the stairs and into Luna's arms. She unfolded it with a snap and spread it over her lap, then made a face at Neville. "Put your knees down," she said, reaching out and tugging at the knee closest to her. Startled, Neville let his knees drop and Luna spread the blanket over him as well.

"There," she said in a satisfied tone. "Now it's not nearly as cold." She snuggled back against her pillow, sipped her cocoa contentedly, and turned her head to gaze at the falling snow out the window again.

Neville felt slightly lightheaded, like he couldn't breathe, then realized it was because he was holding his breath. He let it out slowly, his heart suddenly beating in double-time. It was taking a rather large amount of effort to get himself to believe that this was actually happening; he was cuddling under a blanket with the girl he loved to distraction.

All right, so it wasn't exactly cuddling. They were facing each other, for one, but their knees were touching—that had to count for something.

Luna had not removed her eyes from the window. Neville took a deep breath, fighting within himself for the right words to say.

"Luna?" he asked finally.

"Hm?"

"What if... what if you found someone who wanted you to stay? To stop traveling around the world searching for..." he trailed off as her eyebrows came together.

"I think someone who wants me to stay doesn't really understand me," she said, a bit sternly.

"Not like that," Neville said quickly, feeling his ears begin to burn. Of course he'd muck it up almost as soon as he opened his mouth. "More like... someone who made you want to stay."

"Oh. That's different." Her face smoothed immediately, and she sipped at her cocoa. "If I found someone like that, maybe I wouldn't travel so much. But I do love it — there's something about seeing things because you want to go and see them, not because they're just where you happen to be. I never want to just be somewhere. I want to be somewhere because it's where I want to be. I want to see things because I sought them out. I don't want to just let the world happen to me. I'd like to happen to the world, at least the little bit of it I'm in."

"You do," Neville said softly. Luna looked away from the swirling snow for a moment, a curious expression on her face. "You do. You... happen. You're never just... with me. You happen to me." They were skating very close now; he was sure that she could hear his heart thumping, and his mouth felt very dry. "You've no idea what a... comfort it is to be around you. My life is different every time you come home."

Luna smiled, and reached out to pat his hand. "You always know exactly what to say," she said fondly. "No one else seems to understand me like you do. I think that's why we get along so well. Please say that you'll always be there for me, to tell me precisely what I need to hear and never be lying. I need a friend like that."

Neville's breath caught at her last statement. Friend. She always wanted to have a_ friend_ like him.

"Of course," he said faintly. She smiled at him, and either she did not notice that anything was amiss or he had become very good at hiding his thoughts this last week, because she turned happily to look back through the window at the falling snow. He turned his eyes there as well, folding away the crushing disappointment into a small package that he could examine later. For now, he could enjoy simply being near her, even knowing it wouldn't come to anything more than that.

He'd done a terrible job of reading her, apparently. At least he'd avoided making a fool of himself in the process.


	7. Snowfall

Something very cold and very wet on his face shocked Neville out of slumber; his hand was half-closed around his wand on his nightstand before his mind registered Luna's gleeful laugh.

"What the..." He blinked, wiping his face, scowling at the lamp Luna lit with a wave of her wand. "Why the hell would you throw a snowball at my face? While I'm asleep? What did I ever do to you?"

"It's stopped snowing outside," Luna announced. "And we're going to go out and play."

Neville goggled slightly. "Luna," he said, squinting at his watch, "It's two in the morning."

Luna nodded and tossed the bundle she was carrying at him; it sprang apart as it flew, and he could see it was his overcoat and galoshes. "I want to build a snowman," Luna told him.

"I promise I will build a snowman with you later," Neville said, burrowing back under his covers. Bloody hell, now they were all slushy.

"But right now is the perfect time to build a snowman. You can see the stars."

Damn it, why did she have to be so adorable?

"This is going to be the fastest snowman build in the history of the world," Neville grumbled, throwing back his comforter and reaching for his denims. "Thirty minutes. That's all, okay? And then I'm coming back to bed!"

Luna clapped and jammed a knit cap on his head. Crookedly, of course. Neville set his jaw and looked at her with a pained expression. She stuck her tongue out at him.

He hastily pulled his denims on over his pajama bottoms, ignoring the way they bunched around his thighs, and grabbed a jumper from the pile of laundry he'd been meaning to do and yanked it over his head.

"Socks," Luna offered helpfully, handing him two that did not match. Neville bit his tongue and took them, then his brain seemed to snap awake.

"Why are you still in here?" he demanded a little hysterically. He desperately tried to remember if he'd been decent when he got out of bed, or if these were the pajama bottoms that were missing the buttons. Thank all that was shiny that he'd worn pajamas tonight.

"I needed to make sure you woke up," Luna said. "Otherwise you'd just go back to sleep and leave me to build a snowman all by myself." She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "If it makes you feel better, I didn't see anything untoward."

Well, that could mean just about anything. Neville wouldn't have minded another snowball in his face at that moment, though it probably would have simply turned to steam on contact. He cleared his throat rather loudly and did up the buttons on his jumper before sitting back on the bed to pull on the socks.

He had to admit, once he was actually outside and had gotten over the shock of the cold, it was actually quite pleasant. The wind that had driven the snow before it had also driven the clouds away, and the stars twinkled sharply in the black velvet sky. A gibbous moon was just visible over the treetops of the forest that surrounded the house, making the snow seem to glow with an unearthly silver luminescence.

He'd been correct in his earlier estimate; the snow was nearly up to his knees. It was already caking on his denims as he trudged to where Luna was packing snow into a ball and rolling it. He idly considered using an Impervius charm on them but decided the damage had already been done.

"We can use wands for that," he pointed out. Luna shook her head.

"It's not nearly as fun if you don't do it like when you were a kid," she said. She'd plaited her long blond hair into a braid and it hung over one shoulder and trailed in the snow as she bent over. "Although it's much easier when the snow isn't as tall as you are, isn't it?"

"Can't say," Neville said. "I never really got to play in the snow as a kid."

Luna straightened quickly and stared at him, eyes wide in astonishment. "Neville _Augustus _Longbottom, are you _shitting_ me?"

Neville jumped, more surprised at the profanity than her sudden exclamation. "No?" He gestured around him. "No neighbor kids to play with, not in the middle of a forest, and Gran was always scared I'd catch cold. I didn't even get in my first snowball fight until I was fourteen."

Luna looked absolutely horrified, as though she'd just been told he was kept in a cage and fed rocks the entirety of his childhood. The ball of snow, now the size of a Quaffle, lay abandoned at her feet.

"My mum would wake me up when it stopped snowing," she said softly, "And get me bundled up and take me outside, before the other children around could ruin the snow. She's the one who taught me how to properly play."

The silence was made even more overbearing by the hush the snow blanketed the forest with. Neville didn't know what to say. Luna didn't become introspective often. They looked at each other, blinking, their breaths puffing before their mouths.

And then, suddenly, Luna grinned impishly, took three quick strides, and shoved Neville backwards. Neville yelped as he lost his balance and sat backwards heavily, the snow crunching around him.

"We're going to start with snow angels," she said, throwing herself to the ground beside him. "Come on, lie the rest of the way back."

Neville pushed himself up, trying to get his feet under him. "Luna, I — "

She reached out and pushed at him again, and he once again fell over. Despite himself, he began to laugh. "I'm not dressed for this, it's all cold and wet."

"Then make a proper snow angel. And then we will make a fort. You have a lot of catching up to do, young man." Luna pulled him down as he tried to get up again; this time he lost his balance entirely and fell to one elbow next to her, barely missing falling right atop her.

He paused for a moment, panting slightly with the effort of floundering in the thick snow. Luna smiled mischievously and grabbed at the tails of his scarf.

"You're not getting up again. Not until you make a snow angel."

She'd pulled her braid over her shoulder; it rested against her left arm and was shining with snowmelt. Her blue eyes, which always looked so startled, sparkled with the starlight. Her cheeks were rosy with the cold and she had a very firm grip on his scarf...

He was tired of thinking and second-guessing and caring about messing up.

He closed his eyes, leaned down, and brushed his lips lightly against hers.

He'd once been outside in the greenhouses when lightning struck the metal frame of the building. Every hair had stood on end and a delicious prickle had snaked down his back as the energy had dissipated. He'd spent the intervening years wondering if he'd ever feel a sensation like that again.

The answer was, unequivocally, yes — tenfold.

She'd gasped slightly just before their lips met, and so her lips had been slightly open. Neville had been somewhat worried that he wouldn't know what to do with that, would botch everything, but a tiny portion of his brain laughed. This... this was easy. It was easy and wonderful and so, so right. And she... she was kissing back, hesitantly at first, but with growing warmth, gloved fingertips reaching up to touch his cheek, a tiny nip at his bottom lip with her teeth that may or may not have been on purpose...

Had his shoulder and elbow not begun to shake with the effort of holding him up, he might never have pulled away, never noticed the cold. He opened his eyes as he pulled back, looked into hers. They were both breathing heavily, both at complete loss for words.

Luna swallowed. "I've never done that before," she said.

Neville smiled slightly. "Neither have I," he admitted shyly. Now there was something else that only she knew about him. He shifted, his shoulder still complaining at its treatment, and sat up on his haunches next to her, his hand finding hers and squeezing.

"Is this what we're doing from now on?" Luna asked. "You and I?"

Neville licked his lips. "If you like." He pulled her up to sitting. "I'd like to."

"I think I'd like to as well," she said thoughtfully. She smiled bashfully — Luna, doing anything bashfully? The new dimension she'd suddenly acquired made Neville's heart swell. "Actually, I've considered whether I'd like to for quite some time now. I just doubted that Gryffindor's Swordbearer would take the trouble to notice me."

"Notice you?" Neville said, disbelieving. "Luna, I haven't been able to stop thinking about you since I got your letter. And before that..." He trailed off, distracted by the way she was twining her fingers through his. "I don't know when it started," he said finally, after he'd reorganized his thoughts. "But I've been doing a lot more than noticing you for... well, for years, really."

"Oh, good," Luna said, with relish. "I was worried that was all in my head. You're very hard to read, Neville."

Neville's jaw dropped, and he made an inarticulate sound before giving up entirely and leaning over to kiss her again, fairly certain that this, at least, would not be a difficult action for her to decode. Her enthusiastic response certainly left nothing to doubt. Both hands free now, he pulled her closer and of her own accord and to his pleasant surprise, she swung her legs over across his lap and settled herself there, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

Neville would have quite gladly sat there in the snow for the rest of the night, holding Luna to him, kissing her as thoroughly as he knew how (and they were both learning new methods of thoroughness very quickly as they went along). However, despite the warmth flooding his veins, he was not wearing gloves, and before too long even Luna's presence was not enough to distract him from how cold and wet the melting snow had made his denims — not that he didn't make a valiant effort to ignore it.

"You're shivering," Luna murmured, drawing back only enough to be able to form the words, their noses still touching.

"I'm a little cold," Neville admitted. Technically, between the weight of Luna on his lap and sitting in the snow, he couldn't feel his legs.

"Let's go inside, then," she said.

"What about your snowman?" Neville teased.

"Bollocks to the snowman," she said, pushing herself to her feet and reaching out a hand to help Neville up. "There are far better things to do inside, and only some of them involve a hot drink and a blanket for you." She thought for a moment as she studied his face. "Actually, most of them involve a blanket. Your lips are turning blue. We will continue the snowman when indoor activities begin to bore us."

Neville rather suspected the snow would be melted by then, but docilely allowed Luna to lead him by the hand indoors.

* * *

><p>He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so tired at half past three in the morning, and yet loathed the very idea of going to sleep.<p>

He'd changed into dry clothes, and Luna had insisted on fixing him hot soup. He did not argue when she sat him down in the kitchen, wrapped her quilt around his shoulders, and watched him eat every bite. He hadn't realized how cold he'd been until his hands started tingling as blood returned to them. The problem with finally being warm was that drowsiness now stole over him like warm water, and his eyelids adamantly refused to stay open.

"You look tired," Luna observed. Neville nodded. Even that small movement was an effort. "We should get you into bed. Sleep is very important, you know. It gives your mind a chance to think things over without your brain getting in the way, and there are a lot of things that it needs to think about right now."

"You don't say." Neville attempted a smile, got halfway there and gave up, leaning lazily on one hand, propped up by his elbow on the kitchen table. Luna smiled back at him and he marveled at how beautiful she was, even at three in the morning, her hair coming loose from her long plait and wisping around her face like dandelion down. Not even that image, however, was enough to keep his eyes open.

He wasn't sure how Luna managed to maneuver him up the stairs, but he found himself holding her tightly in front of the bathroom door that separated their two bedrooms, face buried in her hair. He inhaled deeply, relishing the scent of her. It was then that he sussed out where they were, and why they had paused.

They were trying to figure out which bedroom to go to.

He very suddenly came almost fully awake, startled there by the sudden crashing realization of possibility. His heart, sluggish with sleep, began to rouse as he stepped back slightly, holding Luna at arm's length, studying her. She cast her gaze downward for just a moment, then looked demurely up at him through her lashes with a small smile, two tiny spots of color blooming high on her cheekbones. That look very nearly unhinged his resolve entirely.

He drew her close again, marveling at how warm she was against his chest. "I... really don't want to screw this up," he said softly, gesturing between the two of them. "Probably why I waited so long to... well." He gave her a tiny squeeze, which she returned before stepping back herself, her head tilted just slightly to one side as she studied him.

"Let's take this one day at a time," she said gently. "Just because it took so long to get started doesn't mean we have to run to catch up and make up all the yesterdays we've missed all at once." She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his cheek in a warm, lingering kiss. "We've got tomorrow. And tomorrow's tomorrow. And we'll take as many tomorrows as we need." She took another step back, reaching out to brush the side of his neck lightly before letting her hand drop. "I don't want to scupper it up either," she confided, continuing to back up. Suddenly her face split into a devilish grin and she paused at her door. "Besides, there's something undeniably delicious about your methodical courtship." She winked and slipped into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her with a quiet click.

Neville swallowed, and the sudden burst of energy that had infused him melted away all at once. He made his way slowly to his bedroom, still convinced he'd made the right choice and now just trying to convince his hormones of that. Pulling his duvet up to his chin, the enormity of what had happened out in the snow came tumbling down around him and immobilized him.

He'd done it. He'd thrown all caution to the wind, risked everything that really mattered to him... and it had worked. If he wanted to, right now, he could go knock on her door and kiss her when she answered. He could go rouse her and they could sit by the fire, doing nothing but holding each other. He'd spent so long daydreaming about the notion that translating it to reality was something his mind could not wrap around, yet. A large portion of it was still back in the snow, processing that first astonishing moment when he's he'd first brought her his lips to hers...

Despite his bone-tiredness, there was every indication that his mind was going to continue churning and deny him anything even resembling sleep. He closed his eyes anyway, hoping that the images so clear and sharp in his brain would give way to dreams just as sweet.

There was a soft knock at the door. Neville sat up, his body protesting in weariness, as it opened slowly and Luna appeared around the corner of it. The moon setting behind the trees let barely a sliver of light into the room along his ceiling, and it leached all the color from the room so Luna was pale as a ghost.

"What happened tonight is big," she said, and she sounded almost shy. "So big that my thoughts can't fill it up by themselves. There's plenty of room for two, though... if you want to try and help."

He must have nodded, because now she was crawling under his duvet, and he couldn't believe his eyes as she snugged up against him, lying on her side with her back pressed against his chest. He rolled onto his side and she fit perfectly there, in the crook of his arm as he laid it across her, pulling her closely to him. She gave a little sigh and twined her fingers in his.

"That's much better. Two people fill up the night together much more easily than apart."

Neville had nothing to say to that; he simply rested his chin on the top of her head and closed his eyes, still disbelieving she was even there, pressed against him and — judging from her breathing — falling blissfully asleep.

He closed his eyes, but now he knew that his dreams could never be so sweet as this moment.


	8. Breathe

Years later, Neville would still not be able to recall where that weekend went.

There were moments that he would never forget, moments he'd framed in his mind and carefully archived away. Waking up that first morning, half-expecting the entire thing to be a dream, but for the armful of beautiful girl in his bed, so serene that he'd fallen back asleep so he wouldn't move and wake her. The kiss they'd shared when they both awakened, a thing of passion and heat and energy that had left the both of them gasping and trembling. He'd held her so tightly, hands running over her back, wishing he had the courage to slip off the cotton camisole she wore and explore every inch of that soft skin — and yet grateful that it was there, as a reminder that they need not move quickly. The dozens of intimate touches that punctuated the day alternately spent studying and curled up on the couch, ostensibly "taking a break" from the mental rigors of calculating coefficients and nullifiers.

The days went by in odd dollops of time; as he lay down to sleep that Saturday evening he could not actually remember what he'd done with the rest of the day. It mattered very little, however, because Luna had once again elected to spend the night in his bed, her head resting on his chest with his arm around her, cradling her to him. He stroked her cheek with his other hand, and when he was sure she was asleep, he whispered the words he was still too afraid to say while she was awake, scared of what they'd sound like when said aloud, scared of what she'd say in response.

Sunday was the day that would live most intact in his memories.

He woke up to Luna propped up on one elbow, idly tracing patterns on his arm, her face brightening with a smile as his eyes opened and he stretched.

"Good morning," she said warmly. "Did you sleep well?"

"I dunno, did I?" Neville asked. "You were there."

"I was asleep, too," she said seriously. "As remarkable as my powers of observation are, they're limited by my current state of consciousness."

"I guess we'll never know then," Neville said, and he reached up and brought her down to kiss him.

It was startling, how easy and natural that had become, after scarcely more than a day. The notion nearly threw him off, caused him to pause for the barest of moments before Luna tangled her fingers in his hair and lightly ran her nails across his scalp, causing a shiver to run down his spine and him to forget that line of thought.

Of course it was natural. Being with Luna was the most natural thing in the world.

Had his mouth not been otherwise engaged, he would have gasped when Luna's hand slid to the small of his back and pulled the lower half of his body closer to her, the sensation of being pressed against her bringing with it a wave of longing strong enough to make his head spin. The best he could manage was a tiny muffled sound of surprise — and an answering hand to the small of her back, drawing her against him in delicious amplification of that longing.

Somehow her hand was under his tee shirt, her fingers tracing the bare skin and sending more shivers through his whole body, shivers and more than shivers, fully waking something within him he'd mostly come to associate with a very small potions laboratory cubicle.

If he had been asked previously, he would have sworn up and down that a growl was not a sound he could make. However, there was really no other way to describe the noise he made as he cast aside whatever fears he'd had the day before and slid his hand under the back of her camisole, running his palm lightly along her skin, marveling at how soft and smooth and exquisitely feminine and arousing she was. Timidly, and with some trepidation, he slipped his hand around to her front and slowly, inch by inch, made his way upwards. She made a soft sound of surprise and pleasure against his lips and, had he not very specifically cultivated the skill of thinking clearly through extreme lust, he would have lost all control then and there.

As it was, it was nearly physically painful for him to break the kiss, take his hands from her and push her slightly away, so he could look deeply into her eyes.

"Are we...?" he left the question hanging, both of them out of breath. His body screamed at him in the affirmative, accused him of all sorts of traitorous acts for stopping when he had, but the pause was, in his opinion, absolutely necessary. "I... Luna, I don't know... is this a good idea?" He took a deep breath, blinking through the haze of yearning that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. "I don't want to rush things," he said, closing his eyes. "And..."

"And it's only been two days," Luna said softly. "Give or take several years," she added. She reached up to trace a finger along his ear, and it sent shivers down his spine. "We've spent a lot of time on the brink of things. It's exciting." She smiled and tugged his earlobe and he leaned down to kiss her again, and the feel of their bodies pressed against each other again nearly unhinged his conviction. He pulled away, nearly trembling with the effort of holding himself back. Luna rolled onto her side, taking him with her, and pressed her forehead against his.

"Let's toe the line for a while longer," she said, slightly breathless. "It's the only time in our lives we'll ever be able to. Once it's done, it's done forever. And I can't think of anyone I'd rather teeter on the edge with."

Neville nodded, swallowing, relief washing over him as he drew her to him and buried his face in her hair. "I love you," he whispered, and he felt her freeze at the words, causing a slight flutter of panic in his chest. He felt the sudden need to expound upon the statement, even as she drew back slightly to look up at him with a slightly shocked look on her face. "I've loved you for years, Luna, and I've been hiding from it because I'm a coward, but I can't hide from it anymore and I — I need you to know it — and... and you're looking at me awfully funny."

"Shh," Luna said, placing a finger over his lips, smiling. "You think I haven't known? I've known all along, but I didn't let myself in on the secret because you hadn't let _yourself_ in on the secret yet either. We're very good at keeping secrets until the proper moment. We should be commended." Her eyes went wide. "Oh, and I love you, too. Of course. Sorry. I didn't mean to leave that thought of yours floating like that; you must have been terribly anxious."

Neville chuckled. "Hyperbolic understatement." He brushed a wisp of hair out of her eyes. "I hope this means you'll be my girlfriend."

"I assumed that would be the case," Luna said. "Were you thinking differently? With the whole loving each other thing, it seems like the most expedient arrangement."

"It's a brilliant arrangement. I approve wholeheartedly." He smiled. "I've never had a girlfriend before."

"What a charming coincidence. I've never had a boyfriend before." She ran her fingers through his hair. "I am going to kiss you again."

She was as good as her word.

* * *

><p>With Luna at his side when he returned home in the evenings, three weeks passed remarkably quickly. The cold weather did not let up, and his studying became more feverish, covering topics even Luna had not touched, though he found that learning alongside her was almost better than learning under her guiding hand.<p>

There was other learning of which they also partook alongside one another, though this was of a less academic nature and involved far less clothing and far more restraint. Neville almost did not mind the cold nights, sharing warmth beneath the blankets with Luna's back snugged up against his front as they drifted off to sleep.

The Monday of that fourth week, Neville entered the potions laboratory with anxiety, and his heart leaped into his throat as he saw the cauldrons already assembled, a sheaf of blank parchment and an opaque potion flask at each station. Three of his fellow Auror candidates were there already, standing behind their workstations with similar looks of unease on their faces.

Carson stood at the front, writing instructions on the chalkboard. She turned slightly when she saw Neville come in and beckoned him to the front of the room.

"Mr. Longbottom," she said quietly when he was within earshot, "I won't be seeing you after you turn in your proof, so I'd like to say this now. It has been a privilege to watch your progress in this seminar. When you first came to this laboratory I was certain you'd be one of the ones to leave second week. Your dedication is inspiring and admirable, and were it solely up to me, I'd advance you to Junior Auror on the spot just from that."

Neville blinked. "Th-thank you," he stammered. "I... I had a good tutor."

"You've got a good mind is what you've got," Carson corrected. "A good tutor won't do a thing if you haven't got a good mind. Put that good mind to good use, Longbottom. When you get your acceptance letter, I'd like to see you applying for my squad of Potioneers."

Neville blinked again, not having any words at the ready for a compliment of this caliber. She waved a hand at him, as though to tell him a response was not necessary. "Good luck. I think you'll find this examination to be a cake walk. It's been a pleasure to work with you."

Neville nodded, astonished, and turned. During their little conference, the other two remaining candidates had entered and chosen their workstations; he proceeded to the last empty one. Additional people had filtered into the room. Neville knew from previous seminars that these were the Auror examination committee, and would be watching and taking careful notes of how all the candidates performed during the examination. Simply getting a correct answer was not enough; how an Auror handled himself in a crisis was even more important.

"Good morning," Carson said briskly at the front of the room. "You all know why you are here. Twenty candidates entered this seminar. Six remain. I am proud of each and every one of you — of your mettle, of your determination, and of the skills you have cultivated while here.

"Before you sits a flask of a random poison. None are poisons you will have encountered before. In the drawers beneath your workstations are the ingredients you are permitted to use. You will find them more than adequate for the task. This is not an examination where unbridled creativity will benefit you: these poisons are incredibly straightforward and will need to be dealt with promptly." She gestured to the examination committee standing at the wall. "You are of course familiar with the Examiners. They will also administer antidotes as they are needed — not that I expect it from this crowd." She tapped an hourglass on her desk. "You may begin."

Neville reached for his flask with a hand that only slightly trembled. He lifted the glass stopper and carefully wafted the vapors toward his nose. The acrid scent nearly made him vomit; his stomach roiled and he could barely stop himself retching loudly. Even his skin prickled. Everything in his body screamed at him to put the flask down and walk away.

It's poison, he insisted to himself, not pumpkin juice. Of course your body is going to reject it.

He upended the flask and drained it, fighting his gag reflex the entire time.

Pain began licking his veins immediately, as though someone had set fire to his entire nervous system. He flexed his fingers and was alarmed to find that his motor responses were distressingly delayed and clumsy. He'd have to be very careful using the knife. He grit his teeth and yanked open his ingredients drawer and was relieved to see both foxglove root and ankh scarab shells, two ingredients he'd been worrying wouldn't be present.

Spots began to swim before his eyes as he dumped the scarab shells into the dry cauldron to roast before quenching them. He blinked hard and set the flame below to cauldron to its hottest white. He needed high heat, and fast. This antidote was quick, five minutes once he got all the ingredients together, but already it felt as though he were standing on knives and he could feel a rash developing on his shoulders, making his shirt burn him with the friction of moving.

The scarab shells were popping; Neville poured in a measure of water and swallowed hard. It almost felt like his throat was closing. He could see the rash spreading to his forearms now, past the rolled up sleeves of his Oxford, and he wondered idly what poison this was, because it was very effective at making him at least _wish_ he was dead. His head swam, small points of light bursting behind his eyelids each time he blinked.

The foxglove could just go in whole after a quick muddle with the bubotuber pus. He tipped it into the cauldron and gripped the edge of the desk. He suddenly felt as though his center of gravity had shifted several degrees.

He needed to relax. Panicking would not impress the examiners, and it would also increase his metabolism and give him even less time to brew the antidote. He took a deep breath — or tried to. His throat seemed thick. He tried to swallow, and the muscles would not cooperate, but merely twitched.

He reached up with hands that were tingling to the fingertips with pain, chest heaving as he tried to take a breath and he couldn't. He couldn't breathe. Distantly, he heard Carson say something sharply, felt a hand on his shoulder that made him recoil with pain at the burning of it. Sparks began to dance before his eyes and he couldn't hear anymore. He couldn't _breathe_. He felt someone bend him backwards over the work table and shove something down his throat, and, while some of the burning subsided immediately, his airway did not open up and now blackness was tinging the edge of his vision. His chest ached abominably, trying to expand with the air that wasn't there, laboring uselessly in reflex.

His vision flickered, then went entirely black, and then he was floating, painlessly, in blissful darkness.

* * *

><p>He was fairly certain he'd been hit by a train.<p>

His ribs ached something horrible, even when breathing gingerly. His head was throbbing. His throat hurt. His _eyes_ hurt. He opened them anyway.

"There we go, love," a kindly voice said. He blinked, attempting to focus through the haze that seemed to be blanketing his vision. "I'm Healer Johanson. You're going to be just fine." He grunted. All evidence seemed to point to the contrary. "You had a very severe allergic reaction," Johanson explained. "It caused acute anaphylaxis and a corresponding dangerous drop in blood pressure. Your superiors managed to get a remedy to you just in time, though there was some confusion as to what was happening to begin with. You'll be sore for a little while. I can give you something for that if you'd like."

"I'm in the hospital?" Neville managed to ask, hoarsely.

"Yes, dear. Now that you're awake, are you feeling up to visitors? You've a fair few waiting out in the hall."

Neville pushed himself up to half-sitting, propped back on his elbows, ignoring how his ribs complained at the motion. "Yeah. Sure. Who are they?"

"There's a very insistent blond —"

"Her first."

"Of course." Now that he was sitting up, he could see her — taller than she'd sounded, with brown hair and red spectacles, her white Healer's robes crisp and starched. She pressed the back of her hand against his forehead, nodded, and then turned and left the room, her clipboard trailing along behind her.

Neville closed his eyes for a moment. He could swear they were pulsing against his eyelids with his heartbeat. He didn't open them again until he heard a light footfall next to his bed, and then he only opened one eye, very slightly.

There was a smack upside his head. A very light smack, but any pressure right now rang bells between his ears.

"Ow!" he said, his eyes flying open. He glared indignantly, but as his eyes focused, his glare wilted slightly under the force of Luna's.

"Neville Longbottom, don't you _ever _do that again!" she admonished, and he was startled to hear tears in her voice.

"Luna, I'm okay," he said, dimly aware of another person approaching behind her.

"I don't care! You could have not been! You could have died and then I'd be out a boyfriend before I even figured out what to _do_ with him!"

"Boyfriend, eh?" Harry leaned on the footboard of the bed, eyebrow raised. "Way to keep us apprised of the situation, Nev."

"I've been a bit busy," Neville said. He suddenly felt exhausted, and squeezed back gratefully when Luna took his hand. "What are _you_ doing here?"

Harry stared. "Are you kidding? Quite aside from you being one of my mates, every Auror in the Ministry is getting tested for allergies. It's a great gaping security hole. We already knew about the common ones, but there are more rare allergies than you can shake a stick at, like yours. Yours is almost literally a one-in-a-million allergy, did you know?"

Neville closed his eyes and grimaced. "So every Auror in the Ministry knows that I couldn't get my antidote done in time."

Harry chuckled. "Actually, every Auror in the Ministry knows that you were in the middle of brewing a brilliant antidote for Firehusk poison and you continued to try and brew it even after you'd stopped being able to breathe. They're all bloody well impressed."

"As they should be," a third familiar voice said from the doorway. Carson swept in, the look of concern plain on her face. Neville stared, dumbfounded, as she stopped by his bed. "Neville, I owe you an apology," she said, and his first name sounded very odd coming from her. "It never occurred to us what was actually happening, when you didn't recover after we gave you the antidote. I should have known better. You have Marsha Egan to thank for recognizing an allergic reaction, and for knowing the spell that opened your windpipe again."

Neville nodded. "I suppose I'm no longer an Auror candidate," he said heavily.

Carson's eyebrows drew together. "Of course you're still a candidate," she said. "I spoke with the head of the Auror office myself. Actually, I believe his exact words were, 'Disqualify him? Are you mad?'"

"But I didn't finish," Neville protested.

"Nonsense. It was clear what antidote you were going to produce. It was the correct one. You'd prepared the reagents properly. You just didn't have time to let it simmer. Once you produce your proof, I'm entirely willing to call it a most satisfactory pass."

Neville's eyes went wide. "Someone get me some parchment," he said.

"Heavens, Longbottom, I don't mean right now." Carson sounded amused and slightly alarmed.

"It's an easy proof," Neville insisted. "I've got it. Just —"

"No," Luna said firmly. She pressed on his chest and he winced, and she used her advantage to push him back against his pillow. "As your tutor, I admire your dedication to academics. As your girlfriend, I'm still worried sick over you and you're going to rest. You'll have ample time to be a budding antidotes genius once you've spent a few hours not being nearly dead."

"Yes, ma'am," Neville mumbled, ignoring the muffled sound of amusement Harry made.

Carson nodded in satisfaction. "I'm very relieved you're going to make a full recovery," she said in tones of farewell. "I'll be waiting for your owl with your proof. And then... I do believe this was your last training seminar before you submit your application for the spring deadline?" Neville nodded. "Then I wish you luck. Not that you're likely to need it."

She swept out of the ward, her purple robes swishing as she rounded the corner. Taking her place in the doorway almost immediately was Healer Johanson, bearing a tiny phial of green liquid.

"This will help with those aches and pains," she said by way of explanation, glancing at his visitors. "Good afternoon, Mr. Potter. Glad to see you've recovered from those burns." She unstoppered the phial and waited until Neville was sitting up again before handing it to him. "Miss — Lovegood, is it?" Luna nodded. "I presume you'll be the one seeing to his well-being once we release him?" She nodded again. "All right. He's stable, but he'll have some chest pains. He strained several of the muscles involved with breathing. I'll be sending you home with several potions, Mr. Longbottom. Be sure to follow the instructions carefully, because you won't be drinking all of them — some of them you just inhale the vapors. I don't want you Apparating until the chest pains are completely gone." Neville winced at the very notion of feeling the constriction Apparating caused.

"How long should he stay in bed?" Luna asked.

"Oh, he shouldn't need to," Johanson said. "Though he might like to, he'll probably be exhausted for several days." She made a notation on her clipboard. "You're free to go when you feel up to walking, Mr. Longbottom. Just check in with the desk on the way out. They'll give you your potions."

Neville nodded. He was suddenly very tired, but didn't want to spend another minute in this hospital bed. He pushed himself up to sitting and looked to Luna.

"Do you think you could help me home?" he asked.

Luna nodded. "Of course. But you should probably let everyone else visit you first. We've all been waiting in the hallway for an hour."

Neville groaned and fell back onto the pillow, instantly regretting the rapid movement. "How many of you could there possibly be?" he asked petulantly.

"There were about a dozen when I came in," she replied brightly. Neville sighed and closed his eyes, not sure he wanted to open them again any time soon.

"Let them in, I suppose," he said, feeling very weary and sore despite the potion he'd taken. Luna stroked his shoulder gently.

"Would you like to be sitting up? Then you can pretend you're holding court."

Neville snorted. "Not really, but I'm like to fall asleep if I'm not." Chest protesting this unfair treatment, he pushed himself up to a sitting position again, aided by Luna's hand on his back. He was rewarded by a light embrace and he buried his face in her hair, inhaling deeply, ignoring the ache that radiated through his ribs as he did so.

"Don't scare me like that again," she murmured as she rocked him slightly. "Or, if you're going to, let me know ahead of time what you're going to do, so that I don't get Ron Apparating into our living room to tell me in one breath that you nearly died but you're okay now. I didn't have time to properly feel scared or relieved, so I'm still feeling them in turns, and it's a bit shocking to the system, and I'm still getting all shaky whenever I think you mightn't be okay..."

"Shh," Neville said, his arms tightening around her briefly. "I'm fine. Hurt all over, but I'm fine. And now I know that I'm allergic to whatever's in Firehusk poison, so I'll know not to keep it in the house when I start collecting poison samples."

Luna pulled away to look at him quizzically. "When were you going to start this collection? And where will you get them? Oooh, and how are you going to showcase them? There's a fantastic glass shop in Novia Scotia that does brilliant little phials..."

Neville smiled tiredly. "I was joking, Luna." The half-smile became genuine and he pulled her close again. "God, I love you," he said softly. He took a deep breath and let her go. "All right. If I'm holding court, bring in my faithful subjects."


	9. Later

Reclined on a couch, wincing at every movement, was not the way he'd imagined celebrating having passed the Antidotes seminar with flying colors and subsequently being able to put Auror training behind him. He'd vaguely planned a night at the pub, relishing the feeling of finally being bloody finished with academics for good now, washing it down with a good ale. Recently, he'd added Luna to his arm in the plans for celebration. His friends would be around him, drinking to him, having a good time, and Harry would likely have ended up making a spectacular fool of himself at one point or another.

Well, he was still surrounded by friends, and Luna was there, though she was sitting on his couch sipping at something red rather than hanging off his arm. The atmosphere of the party was drastically more subdued than it would have been in a pub, but Neville still had high hopes that somehow, Harry would at least do something utterly stupid.

"So when's the application deadline?" Hermione asked, perching on the arm of the couch by his head. Neville rolled his eyes upward to see her better.

"I have to have everything in by March fifteenth," he replied. "Bloody huge packet, too, and they want a CV. I haven't done anything to put on a CV yet, and they know it — why do they want a CV?"

"You lead the ruddy underground resistance at Hogwarts, mate," Ron reminded him. "And were a leader in the last battle. Really, you could just put 'SURVIVED THE LAST BATTLE OF HOGWARTS' in bold text and leave it at that."

Neville rolled his eyes. "It's not nearly as impressive as it sounds and you know it."

"That's the whole point of a CV," Ron protested. "Making yourself sound loads more impressive than you already are."

"Neville's too modest to write a proper CV," Luna interjected. "I'll probably have to do it for him. If I let him do it he'll probably mumble on about how he's really not that remarkable, and the reader should probably just go make some tea."

"Quiet, you," Neville muttered, nudging her with his knee.

"So when exactly did this all happen?" Ginny asked, gesturing between the two of them with her glass. "Because last you and I talked, Luna, you were fairly certain he was too dense to pick up on how much you fancied him."

"I never said that," Luna said primly, calmly adjusting the straw in her drink. "Not in so many words." She glanced sidelong at Neville, who had raised an eyebrow in amusement. "I said he was too thick."

"Well, I was," Neville admitted, shifting into a slightly more upright position. "A few weeks ago," he said, to Ginny. "She drove me to hypothermia to force the confession out of me."

"Everyone wants to take the mickey tonight," Luna sighed. She shrugged and took a sip of her drink through the straw. "You'll regret being so mean to me when I'm gone."

There was a beat. "Gone?" Neville asked, the light feeling of a comfortable celebration with friends evaporating instantly. Luna looked puzzled.

"I'm going to Australia, remember? I'm leaving next week."

From the corner of his eye Neville could see Hermione pointedly take hold of Ron's elbow and usher him away, Ginny following with something approaching haste. He didn't care just now, and he pushed himself up so he could sit at eye level with Luna.

"Australia?" he asked in a soft voice. "But... Luna, we've hardly even..."

"Neville, you know I can't stay," she responded, setting her drink on the table and twisting to face him. "You knew I was going; I told you ages ago."

"I..." Neville felt a pang in his chest that had nothing to do with his earlier predicament. He took a deep breath, shooting a glance around the living room, which had emptied rather quickly. "Later," he said finally. "We'll talk later. I don't want to make everyone uncomfortable."

"I think it may be a bit late," Luna pointed out, looking around the room a little sadly.

Not knowing what else to do, Neville reached out and drew Luna to him, and she laid her head on his shoulder. He sighed, then swallowed and set the sudden feeling of emptiness aside for consideration later. "OI!" he shouted in the direction of the kitchen. "Where did everyone go?"

He gave Luna one last squeeze as Harry and Ginny tentatively emerged from the kitchen, Harry inexplicably wearing one of Luna's aprons and his glasses askew. Neville raised an eyebrow and decided not to ask.

"I was washing up," Harry said defensively. "And this is a nice shirt."

"I wasn't going to say anything," Neville said loftily.

"You were Not Saying it very loudly. Or rather, your eyebrows were."

"I think I'm going to name them," Luna declared, reaching out to smooth his eyebrows. Neville batted her hand away playfully, and for the moment, he could ignore the sickly feeling in the pit of his stomach that would be fully explored Later.

* * *

><p>It was Later.<p>

Neville hadn't thought that Later would occur halfway up the stairs, when weariness finally clubbed him upside the head and he sank down onto a step, bringing Luna down to sit on the stair above him.

"Just for a moment," he said, passing a hand over his eyes. "God, I'm pathetic. Can't even make it up a dozen stairs."

"You get a free pass for nearly dying yesterday, love," Luna said, rubbing his shoulder blades. "We've got all the time in the world."

Neville shook his head, the knot in his stomach leaping to the forefront. "No, we don't."

"Yes, we do," Luna said firmly, leaning forward to look into his eyes. "I'm not going away forever. Only for a little while."

"I thought maybe you wouldn't go away at all," Neville mumbled, studying his knuckles intently. "Thought maybe I'd... maybe we'd be enough to make you want to stay."

"Oh, Neville," Luna sighed, gathering him in her arms and resting her cheek atop his head. "You make me want to come back. You've always made me want to come back. It's not just because my things are here, it's because you're here. You make me feel like home. I wish I could bring you everywhere, so my home is everywhere I am, like a snail." She lifted her head suddenly. "You could come with me, you know," she said hopefully. "You won't hear back on your application for weeks, and an owl can find you in Australia." She toyed with a lock of his hair. "It's end of summer there now. I know how you hate the cold."

Neville closed his eyes. Oh, it was tempting. Not just the weather, of course, but to be with Luna, doing what she reveled in, learning her ways...

"I can't," he said, crestfallen. "I have to be here in case they want an informational interview; I have to answer them immediately or else I waste my chance." He turned, grasping one of her hands in both of his own. "Don't leave yet," he almost pleaded. "At least wait until after Ron and Hermione's wedding. It's only a few months, and..." he trailed off as she started shaking her head morosely.

"I can't stay longer than it takes you to get well," she said. "I... don't belong in just one place. It..." She sighed heavily. "I love you, Neville, I truly do. But I think this is the way the birds feel when the frost comes. They know they have to be elsewhere before long. I have to be elsewhere, too."

Neville nodded slowly, not sure why he was. She'd tried to explain this to him before, years ago, and he hadn't understood it then either. "I'd hoped you'd stay with me," he said in a small voice. "But I'm not going to ask you to. I know better than that."

"I know," Luna said, stroking the back of his hand. "And I know better than to promise I'll never leave. But I can promise that when I leave, I'm not leaving_ you_, and I'll always come back to you." She leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "I can promise that we _do_ have all the time in the world. Just not all at once." She slid down a step and kissed him again, this one long and slow and luxurious, and Neville threaded his fingers through her hair as he kissed back, trying as hard as he could to infuse it with everything she made him feel, his longing for her return before she'd even left. He lost himself in the taste of her, the feel of her, and he ached with the knowledge that too soon, she'd be gone.

She gasped slightly when he broke away, opening her eyes and looking deeply into his. "Kiss a girl like that and she'll start to think you mean it," she said breathlessly.

"I do. Every bit of it." He reached out to brush a knuckle against her cheek, and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to hold her against him and kiss her again, but this was not the place. He pushed himself up, tugging her elbow as he stood. "Come on. I want to show you just how much I mean it."

He wasn't entirely sure how he'd managed the rest of the stairs, or the hallway leading to his room, but they were standing by his — their — bed now, and he was holding her tightly to him, ignoring the aches in his ribs as he did so.

"I love you so much," he murmured into her hair. "I don't know how I went through life without you before, or how I'm going to do it with you gone."

"I won't be gone forever," she whispered. "I promise." She looked up at him. "You're so sad," she sighed, reaching up to brush his eyelashes with a gentle finger. "I hate making you sad."

_Then don't leave,_ he didn't say. Instead, he sank back onto the bed, bringing her with him, kissing her with as much intensity as he could muster, pressing her warmth against him, trying to store it all up somewhere inside him so he could remember it always.

And suddenly, by mutual assent, the tee shirts were too much, barriers between the closeness they now both craved, and they broke apart just long enough to pull the offending garments over one another's heads before they dove back at each other, melancholy giving way to the heat of ardor that had been kept on a low simmer for a month and now threatened to boil over completely. Kisses were hardly more than hungry snatching at each other's lips, Neville trailing his palms over the soft skin of Luna's back, wanting to feel her skin and softness and lose himself in her.

She was suckling at his neck, now, tongue darting out and tracing patterns against the vein and summoning a shudder so delicious he hardly noticed that she was working the zip and button of his denims, but then she touched him, oh so lightly, and he couldn't help but be very aware of what she'd done as she slid his denims down his legs with the unoccupied hand. He arched into her touch, visceral need lancing through him like fire. "God, Luna," he said in a strained voice. "You've no idea how much I want you." He opened his eyes to meet hers, soft and blue and reflecting the same hunger he felt thrumming through him. "Tonight."

It hadn't been a request so much as a statement; his heart did a somersault when Luna nodded. "Tonight," she agreed, a smile curling her lips. "Right now, Neville, or I think I might just fly apart."

Neville threw his arms around her and drew her to him, paying as much attention as he could to the small details — the taste of her, the feel of her bare skin on his, the ridges of her spine on her back, the maddening way she drove her hips forward into his, rubbing up against his groin and causing him to make that ridiculous growling noise that he couldn't seem to suppress.

Whether out of shyness or desire to make this moment last as long as possible, knickers and boxer shorts stayed in place for far longer than Neville would have put money on, but in time they too were shed and lost in the sheets or over the side of the bed and timid hands explored, eliciting gasps and shy moans that grew more confident along with the explorations.

When Neville flipped Luna onto her back and he held himself over her, he paused just once more. Gasping with the effort of holding back, in a voice huskier than he ever thought he'd hear issuing from his own mouth, he asked, "Are you sure? There's... no going back, after this."

Luna nodded, her eyes intent. "Yes. I promise, I'm sure."

Neville took a deep breath, and gave himself over to what every shred of his consciousness was clamoring for.

Predictably, given the circumstances, it did not last for very long. Both of them excited beyond sensibility, inexperienced as they were, it was a bit of a wonder they'd made it this far at all. But for the two of them, it may have lasted a minute or an hour, they lost themselves so thoroughly right up to the shudders and exclamations, Luna's nails digging in to the skin of his back and he didn't care, he'd never felt such ecstasy in his life...

It wasn't until after, when Neville had caught his breath and the spots before his eyes had dissipated, that he started to feel slightly ashamed. "We'll... get better at that, right?" he ventured, when he could trust himself to speak. "By which I mean I'll get better at that." The last was more a promise than a question, almost a plea.

"It was perfect," Luna murmured from where her head was resting on his chest. "You're perfect. But yes, I imagine we'll get better." She stretched up and lightly kissed the underside of his chin. "As though I needed another incentive to come back."

Neville bit back a response to that, a reflexive appeal to beg her to not go at all. He knew, deep within his core, that he loved her, all of her, and that included her insatiable wanderlust that flung her about the world like dandelion down.

He could not ask her to stay. But he could hold her tightly against him and pretend, for the time being, that she'd never leave.

* * *

><p><em>Dear Luna,<em>

_I turned in my application today. Max almost couldn't lift it, so I took it in by hand. Last thing I want is for him to drop it or lose it. Two hundred pages, it was, took me a month to get everything filled in and write the essays and get the letters of recommendation and I don't know how Harry did it without going mad._

_You'd have been proud of my CV. I extolled my virtues until you'd think I was Godric and Merlin's lovechild. I'll need to spend at least a week being properly modest before I can look myself in the mirror again._

_I can't stop thinking about you, of course. You'd best count those pixies quickly and come back home before I start writing bad poetry and mope about the house in my dressing gown all day. Ron suggested I help out at the shop until I hear back from the Ministry, to keep my mind off you, but I think he just wants to make me do the stuff he hates._

_Harry proposed to Ginny. Finally. I'm sure she's already written you all about it. Harry didn't give me too many details but he's been a right smug git for the past week now. _

_Hermione's beside herself with the last of the wedding planning and she's convinced it'll all go pear-shaped if the linens are the wrong shade of sage, so I've been helping Ron to escape her. I'm not even sure sage is a color. Nor is he. _

_Oh, and Tobias — the New Zealand bloke — is officially moved out. Shifted the rest of his things yesterday. House is lonely now. Need to have you back here to fill it up with wollymogs._

_I love you. Come back soon._

_Neville_

* * *

><p><em>Dear Neville,<em>

_Sage is a grayish-green. Or a greenish-gray. Maybe Hermione has too much gray in her green._

_You're much more handsome than any lovechild Godric and Merlin could produce. Merlin had a lazy eye and dandruff._

_You'd mope about the house in a dressing gown anyhow, don't deny it. The bad poetry is new, though. Be sure to save it for me. Or even better, send me some._

_It's brilliant here, but I forgot a sunscreen charm the first day, so I look a bit like a salamander right now. No one around here has even heard of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, or seen anything like I've described, so I think it's time to leave it in peace, wherever it is._

_I'd write more, but your owl is starting to look impatient, even though he caught a vole while I was writing this. There aren't any post owls out here in the bush so I have to use him. I'd give him a hug to give you, but I think that might make him a bit distraught, so instead I'll just enclose a kiss. You probably didn't feel it when you opened the letter; it was a very stealthy kiss._

_Love,_

_Luna_

_P.S. Please don't forget to shave. Moping about in a dressing gown writing bad poetry is maudlin enough; you needn't be scruffy as well._

* * *

><p><em>Dear Luna,<em>

_And here I was going to grow a little moustache._

_Never mind, even reading those words is ridiculous._

_Sorry to hear about your sunburn. Skin as beautiful as yours should never have any passing resemblance to a salamander's. I know a good salve for sunburns, but I'm not especially useful in a different hemisphere._

_So are you actually roughing it out in the bush? Somehow I didn't think you'd be that keen, but it doesn't surprise me. Are you finding the pixies you're looking for? What exactly are you doing there?_

_I don't think you should give up looking for the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. You never know, it could be hiding somewhere just beyond where you can see. However, I do think it might be prudent to give up on ever finding it._

_I'll tell Max to stay a little longer next time, to give you more time. He's always been impatient._

_I miss you. I can't wait until you're back home. Has it really only been three weeks? Seems like ages. And while the kiss you enclosed was very nice (as though I could ever not notice a kiss of yours), one delivered properly in person is infinitely better. _

_-Neville_

_P.S. I love you._

* * *

><p><em>Dear Neville,<em>

_I will shave you myself if you ever try to grow a little moustache._

_I wouldn't exactly call it "roughing it," as I've got a very nice tent with running water and a lovely gas stove and a bed that couldn't be better (unless you were in it, of course, but that's hardly the bed's shortcoming). Right now I'm working out on a map where the pixie colonies are, which is a bit more work than it sounds, because pixies are very shy and don't like talking to me, and I have to work out which colonies are at war with whom, and some of the colonies have more than one name, and I had no idea there were this many pixies in one small part of Australia. At this rate I'm worried I might not be done for ages._

_Have I told you you're very sweet? I'm sure I have, but I'll say it again: you're very sweet. I think I will give up on finding it, but on your advice, I will never stop looking._

_Max is almost as sweet as you. He's fallen asleep on the back of the kitchen chair after I gave him an owl treat. He looks rather tired, so I think I'll let him sleep until evening before waking him up to fly halfway across the world again._

_It's five weeks now by my count. It's going quite quickly for me, but that's probably because I have so much to do._

_Have you heard back from the Ministry yet? They're downright cruel, keeping you in suspense like this._

_Love,_

_Luna_

* * *

><p><em>To Mr. Neville A. Longbottom:<em>

_Thank you for your submission into the Spring hiring pool at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for the position of Junior Auror. The hiring committee has reviewed your application and credentials and has returned a decision._

_Unfortunately..._


	10. Three Letters

_To Mr. Neville A. Longbottom:_

_Thank you for your submission to the Spring hiring pool at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for the position of Junior Auror. The hiring committee has reviewed your application and credentials and has returned a decision._

_Unfortunately, while your average examination score is well above average, the importance of a strong understanding and application of Transfiguration is inescapable in the Auror office. Our records indicate that N.E.W.T. requirements have been waived for your application, which suggests a lack of background in the subject that may have contributed to your examination results._

_However, the committee feels it is a shame to reject your otherwise strong application outright, and so the decision has been made to extend you the option of sitting the Concealment and Disguise seminar once more, to improve upon your previous score. Once your score has been improved, you are invited to submit another application to the next applicable hiring pool._

_Please feel free to send an owl to your liaison, Mr. Lysander Quartz, if you have any questions or wish to enroll in the Concealment and Disguise seminar beginning on the Fourth of June._

_Best Wishes,_

_Edmund S. Skyhawk III_

_Department of Personnel_

_Ministry of Magic_

* * *

><p><em>Dear Neville,<em>

_I hope this letter finds you well. I know it must be a bit of a shock to suddenly hear from me out of nowhere, but an interesting opportunity prompts me to write before I let it be known to the general public._

_As you know, I'm getting on in years, and I've decided that the time is right for me to retire from my post. This, of course, leaves an opening in the faculty and, as the best Herbology student I've taught in the last decade, I would like nothing more than to see you take my place at Hogwarts._

_I can't imagine you've been doing nothing since you left school, and it's entirely possible you've begun another career in the intervening years. However, if this opportunity interests you, please let me know, and I will put your name forward to Professor McGonagall (she is Headmistress now) as my nominee for the post. I am sure she would be thrilled to have you back at Hogwarts, and I know you would be a brilliant teacher._

_I would of course take you as an assistant professor for a year first, so you could learn to get on with the students and such, and we could begin the transition as early as August this year._

_I look forward to your reply._

_Sincerely yours,_

_Pomona Sprout_

* * *

><p>Neville looked between the two letters on the table, not exactly sure what emotion was currently causing the constricting feeling in his chest. There was such a storm within him that he couldn't easily pick them apart, everything curling sickeningly in his stomach until he thought he would be ill.<p>

_Unfortunately, while your average examination score is well above average..._

_I know you would be a brilliant teacher..._

His tea had grown cold on the table. Rain pattered on the glass of the kitchen window in an endless staccato. Unutterable defeat at the first letter battled with intrigue and hesitant elation at the second.

The two sheets of parchment could not be more dissimilar: the one from the Ministry had sharp creases and crisp, no-nonsense square corners, the dark blue ink at stark contrast with the creaminess of the parchment, the wax seal perfectly centered; Professor Sprout's had obviously been torn from a larger roll, the edges fuzzed and uneven, and the wax looked to have traces of soil stuck in, likely entirely unintentionally.

_Unfortunately..._

_Brilliant..._

Neville had no idea what he should be feeling. His thoughts felt like oil and water and skipped from one letter to the other without any sort of confluence between the two, and his head was beginning to hurt.

He blinked, got up from the table, and had pulled on his cloak and was striding to the Apparition point at the bottom of the lane before he realized what he was doing.

* * *

><p>His father looked at him with mild interest as he pulled a chair up between their beds. Neville had hung his cloak from the back of it and it dripped slightly on the white tile floor.<p>

He didn't bother drawing the curtains around the beds. The ward was mostly empty, the patients he had grown up knowing either having passed on or recovered enough to be transferred home or to other wards. At the moment, it was only him, his parents, and one other patient asleep in his bed, breathing deeply. The Healer attending the ward was, for the moment, escorting Gilderoy Lockhart to an arts and crafts hour elsewhere. The lights in the room were off and the grey early spring sky filtered the sun into a steely, cold illumination through the window at the end of the ward.

He cupped his chin in his hands, elbows propped on his knees, at a loss for what to say. His parents were watching him with glassy eyes, and the little part of him that always wanted to weep when he sat here twisted inside him like a tiny knife.

"I... didn't do it," he said finally. "I didn't make it. Wasn't good enough. I'm... I'm sorry, Mum. Dad. I'm sorry." The back of his throat burned, and he swallowed with determination. Even when he was small, he hadn't cried in front of his parents. He took a shaky breath and drew the letters from his pocket where he'd hurriedly stuffed them in his rush to leave the house. "After all that work I put into Antidotes. I thought that class was going to keep me back, not..." He shook his head and swallowed again. "I can do it again," he told them. "I can try again and maybe this time... but then there's this." He smoothed Professor Sprout's letter over his knee, the dark green ink a little smeared from some of the rain that had got on it.

"I told you about Herbology. Remember?" His mother nodded eagerly, her eyes lighting up for a moment, but Neville knew it wasn't an act of comprehension so much as a response to his tone of voice. "It was the only thing I was really good at on my own. And I know it's not like being an Auror, like you, but... it's something I know I can do. Something I was proud of, before the war changed everyone, before... everything.

"I don't know what to do," he said quietly, looking from one to the other. "I don't know what you'd want me to do. And I don't know what Luna would want me to do. That's — Luna's my girlfriend," he explained, a bit bashfully, his gaze dropping to his hands as he said it. "I think you'd like her. She's very kind, and clever, and gentle. She's in Australia right now, half a world away, and... god, I wish I could talk to her about this." He stopped talking for a while then, studying the scars on his knuckles absently as his mind churned. He glanced up to see that his father was toying with a button on his robes, his mother looking more through him than at him. "What kind of son did you want, back when you could actually want anything?" he asked in a quiet voice, mostly to himself. He looked between the two letters again, and then helplessly back up at his parents. His mother offered a tiny smile and reached out to pat his knee. Neville's breath caught and he stood abruptly, walking over to the window to look out at the colorless sky.

"You're barking up the wrong tree if you want conversation," a voice said from behind him. Neville closed his eyes in slight irritation before turning to see the other occupant of the room standing from his bed, arching his back as he stretched, his hospital robes worn and threadbare. "That lot don't talk."

"I know," Neville said shortly. "They're my parents."

"Oh, that's too bad," the man said, not sounding as though he meant it. He sauntered over to Neville. "And you are?"

Neville sighed inwardly. "I don't believe we've met," he said, turning politely and offering his hand to the man he'd introduced himself to dozens of times over. "I'm Neville Longbottom."

"I'm Ricky McCarron," the other man said, taking Neville's hand and shaking it heartily. "Good to meet you."

Neville carefully noted the man's name today as he retrieved his hand. "Good to meet you as well. I'm sorry, Mr. McCarron, but I was —"

"You were trying to get approval from your parents for the choice you don't know how to make," McCarron said solemnly, bringing Neville up short. He blinked, and McCarron apparently took that as agreement. "I eavesdrop," he said in a stage whisper. "It's dreadfully boring here, yeah? Any road, they're not going to be of much help. Doubt they know a word of what you're saying."

The tiny knife twisted within him again. "I know that," he said quietly, not looking at the other man.

"So why bother?" McCarron looked completely unconcerned at the level of discomfort his words were spurring Neville to.

Neville shrugged helplessly. "I... I'd like to think they're somewhere in there." He swallowed again, looking back at his father, who was watching the two of them talk with air of someone watching the countryside go by on a train. "And that there's someone in there that can be... proud of me." He suddenly felt ridiculous for trying to defend his actions to McCarron, or Stevens, or Jackson, or whoever the man had decided he was on any given day.

"You're just like every other young man who doesn't want to let his parents down. You want reassurance." McCarron said with a shrewd air. He leaned forward, and in that same stage whisper of earlier, "You're not going to get it. You're never going to get it, not from them." He straightened and studied his fingernails for a moment before continuing, "You've got to do what makes you proud of yourself. You're all you've got." He jerked his head in a gesture at his mother and father. "They can't be proud, but they would, if they could. You're their son. They'd be proud no matter what you did. That's not why you're here."

Neville licked his lips. "They were Aurors," he said uselessly. "And I wanted to be one, too. Spent three years trying to be one. For them. And I still can, maybe. Except..."

"Why are you telling me this?" McCarron asked with a disaffected air. "I couldn't care less. Well, I could, but then I'd be no better off than them." He gestured carelessly in his mother and father's direction. His expression then abruptly changed to one of immeasurable intensity. "Don't devote your life's work to anyone but you, Neville. You _can't_ let them down, not anymore. You can only let yourself down. So consider carefully. _Are _you letting yourself down?" He spun in a sudden about-face and strode smoothly across the room back to his bed, where he laid down and pulled the covers over himself without another word.

Neville stared for a moment. This was an ordinary encounter with the man, as things went, but he'd never before felt so out of sorts at the end of one. He lowered himself back into the chair between his parents' beds, and reached out and took both of their hands.

"What should I do?" he asked in a near whisper. "Mum, Dad, what should I _do_?"

* * *

><p>He still hadn't lit upon anything even approaching a solution when he wordlessly slipped into the booth across from Ron and Harry that evening, reaching out to serve himself from the pitcher of beer already on the table. He'd considered not coming at all, but there was only so much pacing he could do before the sight of the walls of his house started to sicken him. He stared at the bubbles in the beer rising to the top in his glass, still determinedly saying nothing.<p>

Harry and Ron glanced at each other. "Rough day, then?" Ron ventured. Neville nodded.

"Want to talk about it?" Harry asked. Neville hesitated. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk, but...

He was saved by the waitress bringing a plate of chips and setting it in the middle of the table.

"More beer?" she asked.

"Yes, please," Harry said, "Another pitcher." She nodded as she turned to leave.

"Actually, can I get a whiskey, please?" Neville asked before she'd taken two steps. She turned back around and cocked her head at him.

"What kind?" She looked at him expectantly.

"Er, Emberglen, if you've got it. Neat. Water on the side." From the corner of his eye, he saw Ron and Harry's completely nonplussed expressions, and he drew in a deep breath. "I visited my parents today," he said finally, not meeting their eyes. It wasn't a lie.

Ron mouthed, "Ah," and buried his face in his glass. Harry unnecessarily straightened his glasses and reached for a chip, clearing his throat. Neville immediately felt terrible for the minor subterfuge. His parents weren't an excuse to fling about whenever he didn't feel like talking out his problems. It had been a cowardly evasion, and now one he was stuck with.

"How's the shop?" he asked in a falsely bright voice. Ron started slightly.

"Good, it's good. Getting ready for the Easter hols coming up, we always sell loads of Skiving Snackboxes once the fifth years get their O.W.L. schedules." He looked sidelong at Neville. "We could still use a hand going through the mail orders, you know."

"You always seem to be able to slip that into casual conversation," Neville said with mock wonder as the waitress placed his glass of whiskey at his elbow. Ron grinned sheepishly.

"Just saying, if you ever get bored pining for your girlfriend. When's she coming back, by the way?"

Neville sighed, swirling the amber liquid in its glass. "No idea. She said something vague before she left about being back in time for the wedding, but it sounds like it's slow going doing... whatever it is she's doing down there." He took a sip and let the liquor lie on his tongue for a moment before swallowing.

At the word "wedding," both Ron and Harry had grimaced. "What is it about weddings that makes lovely girls suddenly go starkers?" Harry asked vehemently.

"I don't know, but if I hear the word boutonniere one more time I think I'm going to hex someone, and it will probably be my mother," Ron replied.

Neville tuned them out as they began grousing about the various aspects of wedding planning they were being subjected to, turning his thoughts inward. He was sure he wouldn't be missed. He stared into his whiskey glass as he let his mind wander over the thoughts that had only recently begun to settle into a predictable pattern.

"Harry," he said suddenly, not particularly caring that he was interrupting a passionate diatribe against string quartets, "What made you decide you wanted to be an Auror?"

Harry's mouth snapped shut and his eyes unfocused for a moment as he thought. "I dunno," he said after a brief pause. "I just... never really wanted to do anything else, I suppose. I don't think it was ever a conscious decision." He took a gulp of his beer.

"All right, then," Neville pressed, "Why are you still an Auror? Why should _I _want to be an Auror?"

Harry looked baffled. "Because," he said slowly. "There are some twisted fucks out there, and someone has to find them and make them stop. And if it's not going to be me, who else would I trust to go out and do it?" He pushed his glasses up with one finger. "As for why you should want to be one... well, that's personal. But I'd trust you to go out and do it, if I wasn't." He shrugged.

That wasn't particularly helpful. It occurred to Neville that Harry probably did not spend a great deal of time soul-searching, and confirmed his previous reflection that Harry did not tend to think through why he did anything. "Ron. Why'd you decide to go to the shop instead?"

Ron grinned. "Because Harry's got it all covered already." He clapped his friend on the shoulder, then the grin slowly fell from his face. "Seriously, though. I think I had enough of the fighting. I'm not that keen on signing up for more, yeah? I thought I was. Thought I'd..." He cleared his throat loudly. "Thought I'd do it for Fred." He rubbed his nose and looked to the side for a moment, then brought his gaze back to Neville. "But it was during combat training, I think, when I just went, 'I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing this.' I've had enough of that for a lifetime."

"What's this about, Neville?" Harry asked suspiciously.

Neville gave a small shrug. "I've got a decision to make," he said simply. "And I've got no idea how to make it, and no one can really help me."

"Did you get the offer?" Harry pressed. Neville took a long sip of his whiskey, buying time.

"I got _an_ offer," he responded, somewhat evasively. "And like I said, I don't know what I'm going to do about it." He drew a finger through some condensation on the table top.

Harry and Ron shared a look. "Is... there anything we can do to help you suss it out?" Ron asked.

Neville shrugged. "Like Harry said. It's personal." He savored the last sip of his whiskey. "I never really saw myself as an Auror. Not until people started telling me I should be one. Three years, people have been telling me I'd make an Auror. Three years, I've been..." he twisted his lips in thought, searching for the right words. "I've been enjoying the thought that I might be something more than I always thought I was." He shook his head. "I'm trying to decide if that's enough."

His words seemed to have silenced his friends. They looked at him in puzzlement, and he found himself wishing for Luna to say something insightful that would simultaneously make him laugh and make everything fall into place.

"You don't give yourself enough credit," Harry said finally. "You've always been more than you think you are, so long as I've known you. No matter what you're doing."

"What he said," Ron interjected.

Neville raised an eyebrow. "And if I'm not an Auror? If, say, I'm apprenticing to a wandmaker or teaching Herbology or writing a tell-all memoir about being Harry Potter's roommate during his formative years?"

Harry's eyebrows shot straight up at the last, while Ron snickered into his glass. "I'd hate to sic a solicitor on you for libel," he said lightly after he took a long draft of his beer. "But god knows there's a market for it." He brightened. "Say, if you write it, there might actually be a grain of truth in there. I should_ hire_ you to write one."

Neville groaned. "Trust you to latch onto the least likely career in that lineup."

"It's Herbology, isn't it?" Ron asked in a tone of surprise, narrowing his eyes as he peered at Neville. "You've gotten an offer to teach Herbology at Hogwarts."

"No," Neville said. And then, in the interest of honesty, "Well... not yet. But I've reason to think that if I want it, it's mine."

Harry smacked his palm down on the table top. "That clinches it, then," he said dramatically. "Another fine Auror candidate lost to the siren melody of his true calling." He lifted his glass to Neville.

"Hold on, I didn't say I was going to do it," Neville protested. "I've spent three years training to be an Auror. I've got Carson practically engraving the name plate for my door on her Potioneer team. I've had a chance to see what I'm capable of, and it's far more than just a teaching post at Hogwarts." For lack of anything else to busy his hands and mouth, he grabbed his abandoned glass of beer and took a long gulp. "The old Neville, before the war - he'd have been a spectacular teacher. But now I..." He lapsed into silence and started wishing he hadn't spoken.

"You're still Neville, mate," Ron said after a brief silence. "The war changed you. It changed everyone. Doesn't mean you're done changing, and you have to be who you are now forever."

Neville furrowed his brow. "And what exactly do you mean by that?"

Harry twisted on the bench to face Ron. "Yeah, what do you mean by that, Ronald? I never realized how poetic you get with a few drinks in you."

Ron reddened slightly. "What I mean is — you don't have to let the war dictate who you are or what you want to do. That's what I thought, at first — I thought I'd seen too much to be anything other than someone who fights against that sort of stuff." He shrugged. "Thought I was a bit of a coward for considering backing out to go to the joke shop. Took me a while to realize that I could be someone who could just... let it be. Be at peace with everything that had happened."

"You saying I'm not at peace?" Harry asked in a slightly challenging tone.

"Peace is not a term that comes to mind when I think of you, no," Ron returned. "But we're not talking about you right now. We're talking about Neville."

"We can be done talking about me if we're going to take the piss out of Harry," Neville offered. Ron shook his head.

"I don't think I'm getting across what I'm trying to say." He took a swallow of beer. "Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't be an Auror, because obviously that's what you've been working towards. But I wish I'd had a professor half as wicked as you'd make."

That tweaked a half-smile from Neville's lips despite himself. "You think?"

"Are you kidding?" Harry asked. "'Now, class, these are called mandragora, or mandrakes.'" he said, in a decent approximation of Neville's accent. "'Their cry can paralyze or kill, and oh, by the by, I chucked some off a wall at Death Eaters a few years back.'"

"Not to mention you'd give the Defense Against the Dark Arts and Potions teachers a run for their money," Ron added, stuffing a chip in his mouth. "Probably Transfiguration, as well."

"Maybe not Transfiguration," Neville said absently. He shook his head. "It's just hard to wrap my head around. I've been so focused for years, and this seems like an about-face. Back to the old Neville I used to be."

Ron shook his head. "Old Neville isn't old Neville at all. He's you, with a couple years and a couple scars and some frankly frightening training." He looked Neville in the eye. "Honestly, whether you're Auror Longbottom or Professor Longbottom, you're a pretty impressive figure."

Neville sat back against the back of the booth, staring into middle space. The tumult in his mind seemed to have quieted, and his gut was no longer twisting. He reached into his pocket and tossed a galleon on the table.

"I've got a lot to go think on," he said as he stood. "Thanks."

Ron and Harry both raised their glasses to him and he smiled, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and walked to the door.

* * *

><p><em>Dear Pomona,<em>

_I can't say I ever thought I'd see anything like your letter, but it came at a very welcome time. _

_I'm flattered that you think I'd make a good teacher, especially since it's been a while since I've done anything with Herbology. After some consideration, I've decided I quite like the sound of Professor Longbottom. If you'd like to put my name forward, I'd be thrilled to accept._

_Let me know how we proceed from here._

_Best Regards,_

_Neville Longbottom_


	11. Separation Anxiety

Neville knocked at the door again a third time, fully aware that only a few seconds had passed since the last time he'd knocked, but too anxious to stand patiently.

"Hold _on_," came Ginny's irritated voice on the other side of the door. He could hear the latch being worked and then the door opened. "Neville? Is something wrong?"

Neville brandished the envelope in his hand. "This is the third one that's come back. Maximus may not be a young owl, but he's never had trouble finding her before."

"I know," Ginny said gently as she stood aside, gesturing him into the house. "But this isn't exactly an uncommon occurrence. It's not the first time she's just disappeared."

"It's the first time my owl hasn't been able to find her," Neville replied insistently. "He's found her in Canada, he's found her in Venezuela, and until two months ago he found her in Australia. As I can't ask my owl what he's seen, I'm just going to have to go myself. I've got three weeks before I have to be at Hogwarts. Do you mind terribly if I borrow Harry?"

"What about borrowing me?" Harry's voice sounded from the sitting room. Neville shouldered through the doorway past Ginny.

"I need your help to find Luna," he said, striding into the sitting room. "You're good at tracking people down. She's not written, and Max hasn't been able to find her for two bloody months -"

"Hang on," Harry interrupted, blinking. "Yeah, I'm good at tracking people down, but did it ever occur to you that Australia's a _continent_? If she's gone from one side to the other, even an owl might have trouble locating her."

"For two months?" Neville asked plaintively. He ran a hand through his hair, vaguely aware that he'd begun to pace. "Hedwig could find Sirius when he was on the run from the Ministry, for fuck's sake -"

"Sirius knew to reveal himself to her," Harry interrupted, his voice brittle. Neville dimly realized that he'd uttered two of the names that put Harry's hackles up, and almost apologized before realizing what Harry was saying.

"Are you saying Luna doesn't want letters from me?" he demanded. "That she's purposefully not taking my post?"

"She might not realize it's Max -" Ginny began from the doorway, but Neville spun on the spot and cut her off.

"He's a ruddy great horned owl, he's pretty damn distinctive, and Luna - she'd want to hear from me, she'd at least take the letter even if she couldn't write back just then..." He jumped when Ginny stepped forward and put both hands on his shoulders.

"Neville," she said, firmly but gently, "This is what she does. You know this. We all know this. She's fallen off the face of the earth before, sometimes for months."

Neville took a great huffing breath, the back of his throat aching. "We weren't dating before," he said, slightly ashamed to hear his voice breaking on the last syllable. Ginny's lips twisted into an expression of pity and she drew him into a hug that was oddly reassuring.

"Luna... no offense to her or anything, but the comfort of others is not foremost on her mind," Harry said hesitantly as he rose from the couch and patted Neville awkwardly on the shoulder.

"I thought it'd be different, this time," Neville mumbled. He closed his eyes as Ginny let go, taking a slow, deep breath to steady himself.

"If it'll make you feel better, I know the spell Mum uses for her clock," Ginny offered. "That way you can know she's okay."

"Yes," Neville said immediately, his eyes popping open. "Please."

"I'll need something of hers," Ginny said. "Blood's best, but I doubt you've got any of that lying around, unless your relationship is really creepy. A hair'll do."

Neville nodded. "Right. I'll be right back."

Ginny shook her head. "Best I go with you. You can't really move the charm that well once it's cast, unless you shield it, and I don't know how to do that." She looked around him at Harry. "Bacon's in the pan. Make sure it doesn't burn, will you?" Harry nodded and slipped from the room. Ginny took Neville's arm and gently led him from the house to the Apparition point.

* * *

><p>"Now don't move it," Ginny cautioned him, a short time later. "Just leave it on the wall." She studied her handiwork for a moment before nodding in satisfaction. "Not as fancy as Mum's, maybe, but it'll do what you need it to." She pointed at the hands of the gold pocketwatch that was now hanging from a nail on the wall of Neville's sitting room. "So long as both hands are pointing to twelve, she's safe. If they're both pointing at six, she's in danger."<p>

Neville felt only slightly reassured that the hands were steadily pointed at the twelve: it only meant that for some reason, she wasn't accepting his letters. "And if she's..." He couldn't bring himself to say it.

Ginny knew what he wanted to ask anyway. "Then the hands will just drift anticlockwise."

Neville nodded, staring at the hands of the watch. He hardly noticed when Ginny reached out and squeezed his forearm.

"She loves you," she said softly. "But she's just..."

"She's just Luna," Neville finished for her, slightly horrified by the bitter note in his voice. "It's what she does. Yeah, I know. Everyone keeps telling me that, as though it's a comfort."

"That wasn't what I was going to say, actually," Ginny replied. "I was going to say that she's just trying to figure out who she is. Same as you. Same as all of us." She gave his arm another squeeze before letting go. "Be patient with her. She deserves that, and so do you."

Neville gaped at her. "How is it that you Weasleys seem to have this hidden font of wisdom to draw from?"

Ginny shrugged. "I watched my brothers make a lot of stupid mistakes, and I listened to my mother." She peered shrewdly at Neville. "Are you going to be all right? You're not going to go haring off to Australia when my back is turned, are you?"

"Don't see why I shouldn't," Neville mumbled, glancing at the watch. "She told me I could come along. I've got time now."

"Yes, well, there's a wedding in a week that I doubt you want to miss," Ginny pointed out.

"True," Neville admitted grudgingly. "I think Hermione would have my head off if I didn't come."

"Are you kidding? You'd be unbalancing her side. I'm not sure you'd have a body left for us to bury." Ginny punched him playfully in the shoulder as she made her way to the door. She paused with her hand on the knob. "Neville?" she asked hesitantly.

"Yeah?"

"You can always come over anytime, you know. If you're lonely."

Neville forced what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "I'm fine. But thanks." Ginny shrugged and opened the front door.

"See you later, then," she said, and the door closed behind her with a heavy click.

Neville sank into a chair and tossed the undelivered letter on top of the other two on the low table in the sitting room, massaging his eyes now that his hands were free. A quick glance told him that, yes, both hands on the watch were still pointed at twelve.

Why was she avoiding his letters? Was she really that busy? Or was there another reason?

Neville sighed heavily and reached out to pick up a Herbology text. At least he could be doing something useful with himself.

* * *

><p>"There you are, Neville. Does the vest fit? It looks good with your robes. Did you get your boutonniere? Molly's got them, I think. You know who you're walking with, right?"<p>

Hermione said all of this very quickly as Fleur followed her around the room, attempting to fix a veil to her hair. Neville looked down at himself.

"It fits fine, I guess. Were you looking for me?"

"What? Oh, no, I was just wondering where you were, but I suppose you were with the boys. So you're going to be walking with Percy, you'll be third down the aisle. Now obviously you're not going to be taking his arm, that would just be tremendously awkward, and you know your musical cue to start walking, yes?"

Once again, this was all delivered very fast. Neville reached out and put his hands firmly on Hermione's shoulders. She threw him a quizzical look.

"Hermione. Breathe. I think you're about to fly to pieces if you don't."

"I 'ave been telling her that all morning," Fleur said, finally taking her hands down from her work on Hermione's veil. "She is more nervous than I was."

"You look great," Neville offered, lowering his hands. "Ron'll be speechless when he sees you."

"Really?" Hermione smiled shyly as she looked down at her white gown, smoothing it at the hips with her hands.

"Really." He caught Ginny's eye in the corner and grinned. "I'm sure Luna will forgive me if I say you're the prettiest woman in the world right now. You're allowed to be, on your wedding day."

"Oh, that's a load of tosh," Hermione said dismissively, but she couldn't hide the way she shot a satisfied glance at herself in the mirror. He smiled to himself and stepped back as the door to the room opened and Molly swept in, fussing with the sleeve of her robe. She beamed when she saw Hermione, and barely glanced at Neville as she handed him his boutonniere.

"Shall we head downstairs then?" She asked as she looked Hermione up and down. "All the guests are here and seated. We can start whenever you're ready."

"Oh, goodness," Hermione said, fanning herself with her hands.

"Stop that," Ginny said, handing her a bouquet of white lilies. "It'll be fine."

Hermione continued to waver on the edge of hyperventilating for the next quarter of an hour as Neville and Harry and Ron's brothers puzzled out how one was supposed to attach a boutonniere, finally resorting to sticking charms rather than the fiddly pin they came with. Ron was, of course, nowhere to be seen, kept separate from the wedding party in amused obedience to the Muggle tradition of not seeing the bride until she walked down the aisle.

They had all lined up at the entrance to the marquee, by what appeared to be height. Hermione stood at the back with her father, looking more and more flustered by the second, and Neville wondered if maybe he shouldn't have given her a Calming Draught when the music began and suddenly she looked completely composed and relaxed.

Harry and Ginny walked through the marquee flap first, followed closely by Fleur and Bill. At the next phrase of the music, Neville shot a glance at Percy, who nodded. They strode through together and began the slow walk down the aisle to the altar.

Neville wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to be doing with his hands. The bridesmaids all had bouquets but he'd have looked a prat with one, so his arms dangled at his sides and he was suddenly very aware of them. A sidelong glance assured him that Percy looked about as uncomfortable as he felt. Neville looked around at the guests gathered. There were a great deal - the Weasley family was large, of course, but though Hermione couldn't have most of her Muggle family in attendance aside from her parents, she was quite popular at work. There were a number of friends and former classmates to fill out her side of the marquee. He recognized most of the ones from Hogwarts, at least, and he was about to turn his head back forward when his eye caught a crown of white-blond hair and he nearly stumbled.

No. It couldn't be. That was impossible. She was on the other side of the world.

Luna turned in her seat and saw him, and the smile that spread across her face was like the sun coming up, making his knees go weak and his heart begin to thud. She waved energetically and Neville raised his hand in amazement, and then he had walked past her row and he forced himself to continue forward, only glancing back over his shoulder once.

"What's she doing here?" he hissed at Ginny when he'd taken his place next to Fleur at the altar. Ginny shrugged. He faced forward, his eyes seeking her out in the crowd, right there in the fifth row. She hadn't taken her eyes off him, a soft, dreamy expression on her face. He almost didn't notice when Hermione began her walk down the aisle, and probably would not have had everyone not stood up.

He did try to pay attention to the ceremony, though Hermione and Ron were so involved with gazing fondly at one another that Neville doubted they'd have noticed if the entire marquee went up in flames around them. His eyes kept finding their way back to Luna's face, studying every curve of her cheekbones, his heart aching at the intense expression she was giving the ceremony, the same expression she'd turned on him so many times when they'd pored over books together. Every so often she would glance at him and the ghost of a smile would play at her eyes, and he could feel the corners of his mouth tugging in an answering smile.

After what seemed a glacial age, the officiant raised his wand and golden sparks danced over the heads of the friends and family gathered, announcing Ron and Hermione as husband and wife. If Ron and Hermione's exuberant grappling was perhaps not the most demure "You may now kiss the bride" he had ever seen, well... it wasn't as though he wasn't planning to do something very similar when he and Luna could finally come face to face.

He waited for an interminable amount of time in the receiving queue, popping up on his tiptoes every so often to try and spot a glimpse of blond hair coming through the flaps of the marquee among the sea of ginger. He smiled politely as the wedding guests passed him, shook the hands of the people who knew him - or knew of him - and then he saw her pushing aside the flap, looking at it with a detached interest before joining the queue of guests wishing the bride and her groom well.

"Luna!" Hermione exclaimed, leaning forward to look for Neville. "I didn't think you were going to make it!"

"I didn't think so either," Luna said. She studied Hermione seriously, looking her up and down. "You look like a perfect spun sugar quill," she proclaimed.

"Thank you," Hermione responded, having learned in the past several years to take a compliment from Luna as what it was rather than try to decipher it. "Neville's down along that way, he'll be so glad to see you."

"I imagine so," she said, shooting Neville a mischievous smile that made his breath catch. "Congratulations, Hermione. Ron is a good man, and I'm sure you'll train him to be a wonderful husband."

"Train me?" Ron asked, amused.

"It won't take long," Luna assured him. "And she'll make it quite painless." She went up on her toes to peck him on the cheek, ignoring his bewildered expression, and then she had turned down the line and was coming toward Neville.

He swallowed and licked his lips as she came near and then she was right there, bashful smile matching the flush of her cheeks, and over her shoulder he could see Hermione wildly gesturing at him to get out of the receiving queue. He felt a giant wash of gratitude toward her as he grasped Luna by the forearms, took several steps back out of the way, and cradled the back of her neck as he leaned down to press his lips to hers in all the kisses he'd wanted to give her for days beyond counting. His enthusiasm was matched only by hers as she clutched him tightly against her, heedless of wrinkling the fronts of their robes. He ignored the whistles and catcalls from the rest of the wedding party. He could hex Harry later. Right now, all he wanted to pay attention to was the girl in his arms.

"They've not seen each other for months," he could dimly hear Hermione explaining to someone. "And her showing up was something of a surprise."

"Ah," came the response, and Neville immediately placed the voice as belonging to Professor Sprout. "I'll have to buttonhole you later then, Professor Longbottom," she said a loudly teasing voice. Neville acknowledged with a peremptory wave, not ceasing his current ministrations, to the sound of general amusement from the onlookers.

But Luna pulled away, a look of puzzlement on her face. "Professor Longbottom?" she asked, a tad breathlessly.

"She thinks I like how it sounds," Neville explained. He half-chuckled bashfully. "She's not wrong."

"But... professor?" She stressed the title, and Neville blinked.

"Right," he said, patting at his bow tie to straighten it. "We've got some considerable catching up to do."

"I suppose so," Luna responded. "While I've been out hobnobbing with pixies you've been changing everything without telling me." She sounded vaguely affronted. Neville raised an eyebrow.

"I tried. Two months, Max couldn't deliver my letters. I wrote three," he added, slightly defensively.

"Oh, I was under a glamour," Luna said dismissively. "I'm not surprised he couldn't find me."

"For two months?" Neville blurted.

"It was a very good glamour."

"And it never occurred to you that you might tell your boyfriend you'd be completely disappearing for two months?" Neville demanded, only peripherally aware of the words that were coming out of his mouth. They'd backed away from each other, their voices gaining a tinny defensive edge, and part of his brain was waving its arms furiously, trying to steer the conversation away from this dangerous topic and back to where he could be holding her and kissing her again.

"How was I to let you know? I told you that there was an unsurprising dearth of owls in the middle of nowhere," Luna said evenly, overenunciating in the way of the very cross. He'd never heard her sound like that before.

"I don't know, maybe you could have dropped your glamour for two seconds and Apparated to a town to hire a post owl," he responded heatedly. When had he crossed his arms? Why was he glaring? Why was he saying these things _now_?

Harry apparently agreed with Neville's inner thoughts: he'd stepped over to them and had a hand on each of their shoulders. "Not the time," he said in his low, stern Auror voice, looking between the two of them, the veneer of authority putting an abrupt halt to whatever Luna had been about to say in response. Neville shot a guilty glance at Hermione and Ron, both of whom were pretending to ignore what had been going on behind them.

Luna shrugged and stepped forward, putting her arms around Neville's torso. "I missed you," she said, in a tone that betrayed none of the defensive steel it had contained half a minute ago. Neville smiled faintly and uncrossed his arms to wrap around her in return, willing the hot tendril of frustration unfurling in his ribs to wait.

"I missed you too," he murmured, and he closed his eyes and felt the tension in his shoulders unwind as he focused on her in his arms. He could sense Harry walking away to rejoin the receiving queue. Four months he'd been thinking about this moment, and now he'd gone and ruined it with his petulance. He stroked her hair softly and resolved not to lose his temper with her again over something that, apparently, was not the gross transgression he'd thought it to be.

"Shall we go join the party?" he asked as he heard Molly and Arthur begin to call everyone back into the marquee for the reception. "I'd love the opportunity to dance with my girlfriend."

"I think we shall," Luna responded warmly. She stepped back and he whimsically offered his arm, and they strolled to the marquee together.


	12. Another First

Neville felt that he now had enough experience to demote "hot shower after a long day in the greenhouses" to the _second_ best sensation in the world, it having been ousted from its former position of glory by the feel of skin against skin in the languorous haze that occurs after a bout of enthusiastic sexual activity. They were both of them radiating heat and satiation, drowsing lightly, Luna's hair tickling the bottom of chin as she lay with her head upon his bare chest. He could not look at his watch - that arm was currently cradling Luna against his side - but he'd put it at around three in the morning, two hours after the wedding reception had finally ground to a halt, the bride and groom having made their escape hours before. He was trailing his fingers lazily along her forearm where it draped across his chest, and was about to drop off to sleep when she shifted slightly.

"So why Herbology?" she asked, arching her back in a stretch.

Neville blinked. "I'm good at it," he responded simply.

"You were good at Auror training, too," Luna pointed out. "Why did you give up on it?"

"I didn't," he protested, his mind slowly stirring to wakefulness. "I walked away. There's a difference."

"Would you have walked away had you not gotten that letter from Professor Sprout?" Luna sounded oddly intent, despite the sleepiness fuzzing her words. Neville wrinkled his brow and thought for a moment.

"I don't know. Probably not. That letter gave me something else to think about. It made me realize that even if I was good in training... I didn't really want to be an Auror."

"Why not?" Luna pressed.

Neville huffed out a frustrated sigh. "I'm having trouble figuring that out myself," he admitted. "I mean... it would have been brilliant, I can't deny that. But this feels more... right. It feels like what I was meant to do, not what I'm supposed to do. If that makes any sense."

"Not really," she responded, running her finger along his chest to connect his freckles with an invisible line. "It looks a lot to me like you took the easy way out."

"I - what?" The words were so at odds with the lazy lilt with which they had been delivered that it left his mind swaying slightly. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that I'm worried that you've gone back to being scared of taking risks," she replied in that same laconic tone. "That you're frightened of succeeding at something big that means something to you. That with this teaching post, back with something familiar and comfortable and safe, you're going to withdraw into a shell and I won't know how to follow you. That you won't be the Neville that risked everything and kissed me in the snow."

Neville sat up, pulling Luna up with him. "You got all that from me choosing Herbology over being an Auror?" Luna nodded silently, tucking a stray lock of hair behind one ear. Neville twisted his lips into a small, reassuring smile and drew her into his lap. "Luna, I... yeah, it's familiar. It's familiar because it's mine. It was mine before I had to start doing all those other things. It was mine because I was good at it, by myself, and I was good at it because I wanted to be good at it, not because I had to learn it in order to - to survive, or protect, or avenge, or any of that." He rested his chin atop her head before going on. "I was training to be an Auror because I thought that was what I _should _do - that I owed people something, that I owed my parents something, that I owed every student that died at Hogwarts something. But I don't owe anybody anything, except myself."

Luna was silent and still in his arms. Neville couldn't help but feel he wasn't explaining himself adequately. "I'm not doing it because it's easy, or because I got discouraged and gave up. This... I haven't even started it yet, and it feels more like me than I ever felt in Auror training." He nudged her head playfully with his nose. "You're lucky. You knew right away who you were and what you wanted to do, and you went and did it. It took me much longer." He waited, but she still didn't say anything. "Are you... disappointed in me?" he ventured, more to break the silence than in any real desire to hear an answer.

"Disappointed, maybe a little. But not in you. Never in you." She reached out to take his hand and kissed a knuckle. "I was expecting to come home to something much different, that's all."

"Wasn't it you who told me that things always turn out for the best, even if people don't see it that way?" Neville asked somewhat teasingly. Luna nodded solemnly.

"Yes. And that's a bitter draught to take."

Neville didn't know what to say to that, so he just sighed and held her tighter. "How long are you staying this time?"

"Only until the Intercontinental Portkey Hub has its Sydney Portkey at half six," she replied calmly.

"What?" Neville exclaimed, dismayed. "That's less than a day here!"

"I know," she said sadly, "But I'm at a critical point in my observations, and if I pause now, everything I've done up to now will be pointless." She lifted her face and planted a soft kiss on his lips. "I promise the next time I come back, I'll be here for as long as it takes for you to get sick of me, and then I'll leave until you miss me again."

Neville did not respond, but merely held her more tightly to him. _Mine_, he thought savagely to himself, closing his eyes and inhaling the scent of her deeply. He tilted her chin up and kissed her, deep and slow, with purpose. If she was going to be leaving him for months again, he did not intend to spend the rest of their scant time together sleeping, no matter how tired he was.

"You're wrong, you know," Luna said, breaking the kiss.

"About what?"

"About me knowing who I am. I haven't the faintest notion of who I am." She tossed her head to flip her hair back over one shoulder and out of her face. "Or what I want. Maybe that's what I'm spending all this time looking for."

"Maybe you haven't found it yet because it's right here," Neville said carefully. "You told me you always felt at home with me. Maybe..." he trailed off as he felt Luna go rigid in his arms.

"It seems like half the words out of your mouth are cleverly disguised pleas for me to stay," she said with surprising heat. "Every letter tells me to come home soon. I haven't been an arm's length away from you since the receiving queue -"

"I missed you!" Neville interjected forcefully. "I hadn't seen you for months! Can you blame me if I didn't feel like sharing you?"

"Yes, I rather think I can," Luna replied, drawing a sheet around her shoulders. "Because you can only share things you claim ownership of. You don't own me, Neville. But since I'm your girlfriend, you seem to think you do."

"I -" Neville could not come up with any words to refute the accusation, because as accusations went, it was a solid one. She was his _girlfriend_. She _did_ belong to him, every bit as much as he belonged to her. Did she not understand that? "I'm yours," he said finally, trying to explain, "And you're mine, and -"

"No," Luna said, cutting him off. "I am mine, and you are yours, and we share ourselves with each other. That is how all relationships work, bitter enemies and lovers alike. I've shared everything I am with you, more than anyone else has ever known, and I was glad - _am_ glad - to have done it and to do it with you until the moon burns away from the sky. But I'm not broken when I'm not with you, because I still have all of me."

Neville shook his head. "I gave myself to you," he insisted. "Everything I am is yours, now, to do with as you will. If you want to ignore that, fine, ignore it, but it's true. I _am_ broken when you're not around. Do you have any idea how much it stung, thinking you didn't want my letters? How much I ached, missing you? Or maybe you're immune to those sorts of things, because you're apparently whole and perfect without me." He hadn't meant to say that last part, but now the words hung between them, almost solid and palpable, throbbing in the icy silence they caused.

"Of course I miss you," Luna said after a thousand years. "Of course I ache too. Getting a letter from you would make my entire day shine, and had I known my glamour would throw Max off I'd not have glamoured the tent too." She reached out to grasp Neville's hand. "I love you, Neville, and don't you ever doubt that for an instant, or we'll have words. But I'm my own person, with my own life. And you should be, too. We shouldn't have to be together to be complete."

Neville swallowed, her words cutting him like cold glass. "Maybe not," he admitted. "But we have to _be together _in order to be together. You may have your own life, but your life is a part of mine, just like mine is part of yours. You can't just go off and act like you did before we were together. You can't just go disappear off the earth because you want to. You've got to consider me -"

"And you can sit at home and make life-changing decisions then?" Luna interrupted. "If our lives are so intertwined, didn't you think you should at least talk with me before taking a job so different from what I'd thought you were working toward?"

"You were half a world away!" Neville retorted. "You were so far away that we didn't even see the same _stars _at night! Hard to have a conversation in a timely manner when there are oceans in the way, isn't it?"

"You could have sent an owl, and I'd have come home for a few days for something that important," Luna returned.

"Except I did send letters, three of them, and none of them got to you because you were hiding from the rest of the world. I'd have waited weeks for nothing, lost my chances at both offers, and then where would I be?" Neville glared and pulled his pillow into his lap, not willing to admit that it felt very like Luna had the high ground with a sheet wrapped about her and him without a stitch of covering to be found. "And besides, weren't you just telling me I should be living my own life? Shouldn't I be able to choose what kind of job I have? It's not as though it'll affect you anyway, as you'll never be around to notice!"

"Why are you acting so surprised that I'll be gone so frequently?" Her tone had calmed and she sounded genuinely puzzled. "You knew coming into this that I travel. Why did you think that would change?"

"Because you've got something to stay for now, and you didn't before," Neville said, his ire beginning to retreat to a slow simmer at the lost look on her face. "You've got someone who cares about you, and wants your company, wants to fall asleep with you and wake up with you. I want you in my life, and it's... very hard to feel as though you don't want to be."

Luna stared at him, looking almost frightened. And that was when Neville saw to the heart of the matter with blinding clarity. Speaking very slowly, hoping against hope that he wasn't about to make things a thousand times worse, he reached up to touch a hand to her cheek. "Just because you've been alone all this time doesn't mean you have to be alone forever. You've got me. If you'll have me."

Luna's lips quirked in a small half-smile. "Prat," she said, lifting her hand to touch Neville's against her cheek. "You know I'll have you. For as long as you'll have me."

"Best mark that down as 'forever,' then," Neville said, pulling her close against him in relief.

"Did we just have our first fight?" Luna asked against his shoulder. Neville chuckled.

"I suppose we did."

"That wasn't nearly as terrible as I thought it would be. Ginny would always be in tears after a row with Harry, coming round Dad's house when I still lived there to rant about how stupid boys are. But this was really very mild."

"I'm nicer than Harry is," Neville said jokingly.

"Yes," Luna agreed distantly. "But we'll have to work on technique. I'm not too sure who actually won the fight."

"That's okay," Neville said, sleep threatening at the backs of his eyelids, "I'm not entirely certain what we were fighting about."

"There were several subtopics, but I think the main point of dissent was our differing views on the construction and upkeep of a relationship," Luna offered.

"Sure," Neville replied. "We can say it was about that."

There was a stretch of silence. "I'm still going to travel. A lot."

Neville sighed. "I know."

"But I'll be better about writing. And I'll try to visit more often. But only if you try to not be so miserable without me."

"Deal." Neville slid down the bed and replaced his pillow under his head, pulling the sheet from Luna's shoulders and settling it over them both. "We've got a few hours before you have to leave. I'd like to fall asleep and wake up with you at least once before you do."

Luna cleared her throat. "I... there's another Portkey to Melbourne at noon. I could stay a couple hours longer. If you like."

Neville squeezed her until she squeaked in protest. "I do like." He kissed her again, slowly and lightly and playfully, and did his best to rid his chest of the oppressing weight it had collected over the course of their fight.

* * *

><p><em>Dear Neville,<em>

_Look at me, going into town and hiring a post owl. I feel like such a responsible grown-up. I think, though, that I will have to buy my own owl to take around with me, because I can buy a screech owl for the same it would cost me to hire 43 post owls, and I get the feeling I will be writing you more than 43 letters if I want to keep you from chewing your own hair at my negligence._

_Do you think you might be able to brew me a little all-purpose antivenom? I was bitten by a spider yesterday, and the Healer told me that this one wasn't bad, but there are somewhere around seventy species of poisonous spiders in Australia, and those are just the mundane ones. They haven't yet documented all the magical ones. Or the snakes, or lizards. They have a dreadfully poisonous jellyfish, as well. I am beginning to think that having a phial of antivenom on me would be prudent. I don't have a proper cauldron, though, and it's hideously expensive in the apothecary._

_Since you've rediscovered your love for herbology, I've included several sketches of some of the plants around here I've never seen elsewhere. I don't know what they're called, but I do know that the one with the triple foliation is a magical one, so maybe you do._

_I'm running out of parchment, and the post owl is looking at me impatiently. Perhaps I should have written the letter before coming to the post office? Any road, do take care of yourself, and perhaps I'll nip home for a visit before fall term properly begins._

_Love,_

_Luna_

* * *

><p><em>Dear Luna,<em>

_The magical plant with the trefoil leaves is called Blue Catfern. It's not a fern at all, of course, since it has leaves instead of fronds, but since the foliation is elongated I suppose that's where it got the name. It actually forms a symbiotic relationship with Welsh Spongemoss, which is fascinating because Welsh Spongemoss isn't indigenous to Australia at all. You see, the roots of the Catfern _

_I'm sure you don't actually care. I think I'll just stop there._

_What's all this about spiders? And snakes? I looked it up, and there are a hundred and ninety-three venomous snakes in Australia, if you count the magical ones. All but sixty of them are deadly to humans. You're not supposed to send potions over country borders through the mail but you're going to need a lot more than just a phial of antivenom, so I sent a whole flask and let's hope no one frisks my owl. Keep it in the dark if you can so it doesn't oxidize. It won't do you much good against the magical venoms, so please please please be careful. _

_You can go ahead and keep Max with you, if you like. I'll have free use of the school owls for anything I need to send. I don't know why I didn't think of that before you left. I'll explain it to him._

_It's gorgeous here at Hogwarts. I've never actually spent the heart of summer here. You have no idea how good it feels to be back. I've even got my own quarters, for when it's my shift to stay nights. And an office! More of a closet, really, and Peeves has taken to turning my desk drawers upside down so everything falls out when I open them, but it's only temporary. The office, I mean - I get the feeling I'll have to put up with Peeves's hazing for a while yet._

_Fall term begins in just a few weeks, so if you're going to come visit it will have to be soon. Give me a little warning so I can arrange to be away. I miss you, but then I started missing you the moment you walked out the door. But I'm too busy to be miserable about it, so there._

_Love,_

_Neville_

* * *

><p><em>Dear Neville,<em>

_Just a quick note, because the Duwal and Biyani clans are about to have a battle and I can't miss this._

_I can be home for the weekend just before term starts, but only for two or three days._

_And I find it hysterical that you of all people are telling me to be careful of snakes._

_Love,_

_Luna_

* * *

><p>Neville stared at the parchment in his hands. "All things considered, I'm in an excellent position to tell someone to be careful of snakes," he said to it flippantly before tossing it carefully to the table. Max hooted at him and he absently stroked the owl's back. "No use sending you back, she'll be here in about four days," he said, and Max fluffed out his feathers in response before flapping his way to the windowsill. Neville let him out to find a roost. He grinned. Four days, and he'd be seeing her again. He turned around and his face fell as he looked around the sitting room.<p>

"Damn it," he said to himself, "here we go again," and began gathering dirty plates.


	13. An Old Jumper

Neville straightened his work robes anxiously. They were too clean. He considered grabbing a fertilizer-streaked apron from the side shed to try and make himself look more credible, but students had begun filing in, and he was trapped, now. A tiny first year with long black hair looked at him with wide eyes, averting her gaze and blushing when he caught her eye.

They were going to eat him alive.

They were congregating over by the door, obviously not knowing where they should be standing in the greenhouse because it was so different from a regular classroom. The sun was shining steadily through the dusty glass panes, catching on the various motes of dust and soil that were in the air, giving the entire greenhouse a hazy, almost storybook aura. Neville breathed in deeply through his nose to calm himself and conducted a quick head count. Twenty-three. Looked like they were all there.

"All right, everyone," he said in a voice that sounded almost too loud. "Grab a clipboard and gather round my potting bench, here. Wands away for the moment, but you'll want quills. Mr Fox, I'll be having that, if you please." He held out a hand and the young red-haired Slytherin made a face as he handed over a tiny Decoy Detonator. "If anyone else has any other items intended to make my first lesson more interesting than I plan on it being, I'd suggest you keep them in your satchels until the end." He hoped that sounded appropriately teacher-y. Twenty-three pairs of eyes were looking at him with expressions spanning the spectrum from boredom to interest.

"Now then. You already know me, I'm Professor Longbottom." It still gave him the tiniest thrill to introduce himself as such. "This is my first year teaching at Hogwarts, and my first year back at Hogwarts since it's been rebuilt." A susurrus rippled through the students, which, he had to admit, was slightly gratifying. "I'll be assisting Professor Sprout this year as she prepares for retirement, which means I get you lot every Thursday morning, rain or shine.

"Who can tell me what Herbology is, and why it's important to magical studies?" He looked hopefully at the gathered students. They blinked at him. It felt a little like being in the mews with the owls. "Come on now. Miss Perkins, perhaps you have a notion?"

The diminutive Ravenclaw jumped at being addressed directly, her eyes widening. "Erm. Well, Herbology is the study of plants. Sir."

"So why not call it botany?" Neville pressed gently.

"Herbology is the study of _magical_ plants," another student - one of the three identical Mr Harrises - supplied. Merlin, telling them apart was going to be a chore. He absently considered color-coding them. Maybe they'd be considerate and grow to different heights this year.

"Right," he said, bringing himself back to the present. "Mundane plants can be important to magical pursuits as well, but magical plants require care and knowledge above and beyond what any mundane plant will need. Miss Arkandy, I assume you're deep in discussion with Miss James about the main difference between magical and mundane plants. Would you care to share that with everyone?" The two gossiping girls reddened, and the blond one shook her head, biting her lip. "Then you'll save your conversation for a bit later, I presume?" They both nodded. Neville suspected he was going to have a reputation as a bit of a taskmaster. At least he hadn't started docking points yet. "The biggest difference between a magical and mundane plant is that, like your wands, a magical plant is semi-sentient. This means that its reactions to its environment are more intelligent and much faster than the reactions of a mundane plant, which is motivated by biological programming alone." He could hear the scratch of quills on parchment and was glad they'd gotten the clue they were supposed to be taking notes. "It also means that a magical plant can learn, have rudimentary memories, and, most of all, can be trained."

He knelt down then, and brought a potted plant from the ground up to the top of his potting bench. It quivered slightly, leaning toward him and away from the students as though apprehensive. He made some reassuring shushing noises at it, then looked up. "Anyone know what this is?"

"It's a Fanged Geranium," one of the Mr Harrises piped up. Neville nodded.

"Exactly. You don't find them in most gardens, because most people don't want gardens that can bite. However, a Fanged Geranium can be very useful in Potions. Who knows why?"

Emboldened by the answers of the other students, the little Perkins girl raised her hand. He nodded at her. "Their seed pods are used in a Minor Sleeping Draught," she said.

"Right," Neville said encouragingly. "One of the most commonly brewed potions in a household. Their roots can also be used to give certain potions a sweeter taste without affecting the potion, unlike sugar, which renders most potions absolutely useless. Now then. Most people don't bother raising Fanged Geraniums because of their rather snappy disposition. However, if an owner raises one from a seedling, they're practically cuddly." To demonstrate, he placed a hand near one of the vivid purple blooms. Several students flinched as the geranium shuddered, then reached out one leaf to nuzzle at Neville's thumb. "They're like a dog or a rat," he continued, rubbing the leaf between his forefinger and thumb. "Raise them gently, and they're gentle back. Ignore them or abuse them, and they'll be defensive when anything comes near."

With his other hand, he gestured at the potting benches that lined the greenhouse, and the long shelf at the back. "Three to a bench. Select a pot from the corner there, and take a seedling from the shelf. You'll find soil at the benches. These won't teethe for a good two weeks yet, so don't worry if they snap at you. If they do, just flick the rim of the pot. The trick is to startle them, but not to scare them. Be careful when you pot them - don't tear any leaves or roots. For the next six weeks, you'll be spending a portion of each lesson with your geranium, teaching it to tolerate and eventually appreciate your presence. Your grade will be determined by how docile the full-grown plant is once it has blossomed. You have forty-five minutes. Does anyone have any questions?"

A hand shot up. Neville nodded, and the red-haired Slytherin from who'd he'd taken the Decoy Detonator took a breath with the smug look of someone who was going to say something insufferably clever. "And how are we supposed to tell them all apart?"

"I presume you know how to write your name, Mr Fox," he replied icily, in a tone he would have loved to have used on Malfoy ten years ago. He mentally slapped himself. He couldn't be taking that tone with students, even if he did immediately dislike this one for pointing out something he's forgotten to include in his instructions. He tried to smooth his voice as he continued, "There should be grease pencils at each bench. I'd suggest you all write your names on both sides of your pot."

"Who's going to water them?" the blond Arkandy girl asked.

"The pots all have a Hydration charm on them," Neville responded. "I'm going to try and stay away from them, so that I don't interfere with your training. Anyone else?" No one raised their hands, and Neville gestured for them to begin.

Once the tumult of two dozen eleven-year-olds grasping clay pots and seedlings and situating themselves at benches had died down, he strolled from bench to bench, answering questions as they came up, offering words of praise where warranted.

"It likes me," the Perkins girl said with a shy smile as Neville approached her bench. Indeed, her seedling seemed to perk up at the sound of her voice, its two leaves shivering at attention. Neville smiled.

"Vanessa, isn't it?" She nodded. "Plants can usually tell if their handlers like them. I'd guess you have an herb garden at home?" She nodded again, her shy smile expanding to a grin.

"My mum says I've an aptitude," she said proudly. "I haven't done nearly any magical plants yet, though. Just Snow Pansies."

Oh, they would get along just fine. "Snow Pansies were my first magical plant, too. I was a little younger than you are now." He patted her once on the back and moved on. The Harris triplets were more intent upon trying to pour soil down each others' work robes than into their pots, but they calmed down at once when Neville loudly cleared his throat behind them and raised a questioning eyebrow when they turned. He was almost disappointed to see that Fox had followed his instructions perfectly and was now attempting to accustom his geranium to the presence of his hands in exactly the way the textbook recommended.

The minutes ticked away and the conversation grew more general, and Neville stepped to the front of the greenhouse once again and clapped his hands. "All right, everyone!" he called, and it took a surprisingly short time before the greenhouse grew quiet. "For homework, I'd like you all to read the section on Fanged Geraniums in chapter two of your textbooks, and turn in a summary of the section at the beginning of class next week. In addition, reading the rest of chapter two in preparation for next week's lesson would be a good idea. If anyone wants to spend some extra time with their geranium before the next lesson, this greenhouse is open to students until half five every evening. Have a good week, everyone."

The students filed out of the greenhouse, chatting noisily. Neville held his breath until the door clapped shut behind the last one before he turned eagerly to the corner behind him. "Well?" he asked anxiously.

There was a shimmer, and then Professor Sprout cast off her Disillusionment charm and rose to her feet from the stool from which she had been observing. There was a warm smile on her face and she thumped Neville on the back heartily, nearly knocking him over - his knees had gone weak after the students were no longer paying attention to him.

"I really don't think I could have made a better choice," she said with conviction, and the smile on his face hurt his cheeks, it was so broad. "Though you'll have to be careful about showing your favorites too obviously," Professor Sprout continued. "Or your least favorites."

"I made it that obvious?" Neville asked, a slight sinking feeling tugging the corners of his mouth down imperceptibly.

"A bit, yes. Make no mistake, that Jameson Fox is a piece of work - I taught his father, cunning and cutthroat to the bone, he was - but he's testing you right now, mark my words. You did well to take away that Detonator. Keep a firm but fair hand with him, and I think you'll find he'll be top of the class. Though that Perkins girl may give him a run for his money, if only to impress you." Professor Sprout winked.

Neville chose to ignore that last. Hermione had already warned him that as the youngest professor at Hogwarts "who also happens to be an attractive, bright, and authoritative war veteran -" her words, definitely not his - schoolgirl crushes were going to be something of an occupational hazard. He'd chosen to ignore her, too. In fact, he was going to try his hardest to ignore the entire notion from the ground up.

"And don't forget to give points," Professor Sprout continued when she saw that Neville was not going to rise to her bait. "I'd have given one of those Harris boys a small handful of points for hitting the definition of Herbology square on the head."

Neville winced. "Right. And I was going to, too. But I forgot."

"Don't worry about it," Professor Sprout said, waving her hand as though to shoo his concern away. "You'll make a fantastic teacher, Neville. I don't think my first lesson went this smoothly, and I didn't even plan that one myself. I may have you taking over all my classes sooner than I had anticipated."

* * *

><p>Professor Sprout's glowing praise lasted him clear through the rest of the day, even if that day was spent correcting N.E.W.T. papers that Professor Sprout had set her sixth years over the summer. The smile was still threatening to break through as he pushed open the door to his house that evening and kicked off his shoes, and he suspected that before too long he might actually begin to whistle. He'd puttered into the kitchen and waved his wand negligently at the kettle to heat water and was idly pondering what tune he should whistle when he felt a hand upon the shoulder of his wand arm.<p>

He did not even have time to think about his response. His elbow shot back as he simultaneously grabbed the wrist with his free hand, taking a step forward before spinning around and twisting the attached arm with him, bringing his wand in front of him and -

"Oh shit," he gasped, dropping his wand and loosening his grip on Luna's wrist. His elbow had caught her firmly in the sternum and it was clear he'd knocked the breath quite cleanly out of her. All inclination to whistle had dissipated and he helped her into a chair, at a total loss for words but attempting to say something anyway. "I - Luna, I'm - God, I'm a moron, I -"

"It's okay," Luna managed to gasp, patting him on the shoulder. She managed a deep, shaky breath and she smiled tremulously. "I thought I'd surprise you by staying an extra day, and instead you attempt to beat me senseless."

"No, not at all, you - you did surprise me, that was - you shouldn't sneak up on an Auror like that!" he finally blurted. Her eyebrows drew together.

"But you're not an Auror," she pointed out.

Neville blinked. "Right, but I'm Auror-trained. Don't sneak up on somebody with Auror training, I spent four months learning how to take down someone who's going after my wand like that, making it reflex, and..." He shook his head. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me. I expected to be alone and I wasn't, and... paranoid vigilance took over, I suppose." He knew he was babbling and he made the conscious effort to shut up.

Luna was studying him as though he'd begun speaking in a language she only slightly understood. "I thought that was all folded and put away neatly. Like a jumper that doesn't fit anymore," she said finally.

Neville felt his brows furrowing of their own accord. "It's not a switch I just turn off," he responded slowly. "I don't become a mild-mannered professor overnight. I don't think I'll ever be totally relaxed again, to be honest. I spent too much time training myself otherwise."

"So it's a part of you," Luna said carefully. Neville nodded. "And it always will be." He nodded again, confusion starting to bubble up through the mortification at having accidentally attacked his girlfriend. Luna sighed. "Neville, why aren't you an Auror again?"

Neville felt his expression stiffen. "We've been over this," he said in a flat tone as he turned and got two teacups down from the cupboard. "It's not what I want to do."

"Why not?" Her voice was light and gave the question the aura of unimportance, but she'd asked it so many times that Neville knew it was anything but. In fact, any time now would be one time too many. His mood, having plummeted from ecstatic to horrified, now settled in on sour to match the useless adrenaline in his veins, and reminded him that he'd been awake since a quarter past four and he'd need to awaken again the same time the next morning. He did not want to think about her insistent question that she _just kept asking_.

He squared his shoulders and began to pour the hot water over the tea leaves in the teapot. "I had my first lesson today by myself. I'd rather you asked about that."

"And I'd rather you answer my question first. I've asked it so many times and you can never tell me."

Neville bit the inside of his cheek and added sugar to the teapot.

"I think maybe you don't even want to know the answer yourself. I think it's because you'll be disappointed in yourself if you knew why."

Neville slammed the sugar spoon down against the kitchen counter hard enough to bend it and turned forcefully. "Do you want me to be an Auror?" he demanded as he rounded on her. "Would you prefer me that way?" Luna's eyes widened slightly, but Neville refused to back down. He towered over her in her chair, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. "How about you answer me with something other than empty nothings this time? Would you rather I was an Auror?" She took a breath, but it seemed as though all she wanted to do with it was hold it and look at him. "Yes or no, Luna," he said warningly.

"Yes," she said finally. "But -"

Something seemed to deflate within him. She must have seen it, because she hurried to continue. "There's more to it than yes or no and you _know_ that. I'd rather you be happy! You'd worked so hard at it, for so long. You were so excited about it, and so invested in it, and it was perfect for you. And then in the space of one day you gave it all up, and I want to understand why!"

"I am happy," Neville insisted. "Thrilled. _Ecstatic_. Except for when you keep insinuating that I shouldn't be, that teaching is somehow beneath me."

"It's remarkable how you get such different meanings from my words than what I intend," Luna said in a dangerously smooth voice. "I don't believe I said teaching was beneath you. If I recall correctly, I never said anything about teaching at all."

"That's because you refuse to acknowledge that that's who I am now," Neville shot back. "It's what I am. I've got an office and a greenhouse and a couple dozen students and khaki work robes with the Hogwarts crest on. And I'm chuffed to bits. I wish you could just see that!"

"Then why did you spend so much time and work so hard to be something else?" Luna demanded. "Why devote your life to something like that and then say you don't want to do it anymore?"

"Because everyone else thought I should, and made me think I should too! You don't care what anyone thinks of you, you just do what you want and damn them all, but I'm not that lucky." He desperately wanted to rub his temples, to pull the thoughts out that were becoming hopelessly tangled as they tumbled from his mouth. "Do you have any idea how much I just wanted someone to tell me what to do next back then? Do you have any idea how much I craved being told I did a good job? How much I _still_ crave that? How much I _do_ care about what people think of me, even if you don't, and," he said, an unpleasant thought suddenly striking him and demanding voice immediately, "that's why it's so hard to have you so far away, because you _don't_ care. You don't even care about what _I _think of you. The only way I know for sure that you actually give a damn about me is when you come back to me."

"What?" Luna asked, taken aback. "Neville, where on earth did that come from?"

"I want you to stay here, with me. Stop traveling. Settle down and live with me and stop running away from everyone who thinks you matter, and then maybe you'll figure out who I am and what makes me happy and maybe I'll feel like I have a girlfriend who cares about me."

Luna's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. "Stop twisting every argument we have around into this. That's not what this is about."

"That's exactly what this is about," Neville disagreed hotly. "It's about expectations. You expected me to be an Auror, and now that I'm not you feel cheated because you had expectations. Well, I'll make a deal with you. I'll be everything you expect your boyfriend to be if you be everything I expect my girlfriend to be, is that fair? I'll just tell you how you should live your life, according to what I want, and you'll do the same for me, and then everything will be brilliant because clearly we don't know the best for our own selves!" His throat hurt, and he realized he was yelling.

"Stop that right now," Luna said, rising from her chair. She hadn't raised her voice, but it had gone flat like water just before a boil. "I never expected anything of you except for you to be _you_. You wouldn't be half so angry if some part of you didn't regret the decision not to be an Auror." She crossed her arms and silenced Neville's stuttering with a glare. "You're right. I don't waste time caring about what others think, and I don't regret any decisions I've made about my life, and so I don't have anything to take out on you for no reason - except perhaps I regret staying an extra day if this is all it comes to!" She turned on her heel and stalked from the kitchen, and a moment later Neville heard the front door slam.

"Bloody hell," he muttered to himself, and he followed.

"Luna!" he called down the lane, pacing quickly to catch up with her. "Don't go. Not like this. Not on this note." She didn't turn, though she did stop, crossing her arms in front of her. He came to a halt behind her and tentatively reached around her, laying his cheek against the top of her head. "Why do we do this?" he asked, his throat aching from his earlier shouts.

"I don't know," Luna responded softly. "It's not at all nice." She leaned back, just slightly, and though the frustration still thrummed through both of them in an infuriating minor key to the present melancholy, Neville knew the fight was over. "In fact, I think I'd even say it's stupid, and serves no real purpose."

"Amen," he murmured against her hair. "Let's go have tea. I'll tell you about my day, and my students. And you can tell me about the pixies, and what you're going to do next. When is your Portkey?"

"Two hours," she answered, and she turned in his arms and buried her face in his chest. "I love you," she declared defiantly.

"I love you, too," he replied, smoothing her hair.

"And I do too care. That you love me. That you care about me enough for the both of us." She nuzzled into his chest, and he could feel his heart pounding against her cheek. "I'm sorry we fought."

"So am I." He sighed. "No one ever said relationships are easy."

"No one ever told me they'd be this hard," she countered. He sighed again and closed his eyes.

"Me, neither."


	14. Treasures

Neville shivered and prodded his wand at the air before the potbellied stove in the corner, making the coals within glow more brightly for a moment. Hogwarts was one of the most powerfully magical locations in the hemisphere in existence for more than a thousand years, the brightest minds of ages coming and going, and they _still _hadn't figured out how to properly heat the place. His ink had frozen over in the bottle the night before. Neville would have been tempted to blame Peeves if the rest of the castle was not also frigid as a meat locker where it lacked fireplaces and stoves. He would not admit to himself that he coveted Professor Sprout's snug temperature-controlled office by the greenhouses, but oh, he coveted.

His ink had thawed while he'd been at breakfast, and he'd settled down to begin marking papers when a timid knock sounded at his office door. An eyebrow furrowed before he had time to control it. It was eleven in the morning on the first day of Christmas holidays. Why would anyone be knocking at his door?

"Yes?" he asked, and the handle clicked as the door opened and Vanessa Perkins slipped inside, bright red to the roots of her hair and carrying a small parcel wrapped in brown paper.

"Good morning, Professor," she said quietly. "I've - I've brought you a Christmas present. From all of us in Junior Society," she rushed to add, holding out the parcel, and Neville suspected that his office may well be warming up simply from her blazing cheeks. Even his most determined obliviousness had not been able to save him from noticing that Miss Perkins had solidly and recklessly fallen for him with all the drama an eleven-year-old girl could muster. He reached out to take the small package while she continued to babble. "We were going to give it to you at the last meeting, but it hadn't arrived yet. And since I'm the only one staying at school over the holidays, I promised I'd bring it when it got here, but Jackie said you weren't going to be here for the Christmas feast."

"Nope," Neville said. "I'm here through the weekend, and then I go home for the rest of the holidays."

"Well, you should open it now, then," Vanessa said, toying with the end of her plait. "So I can explain it."

"It requires explanation?" Neville asked, amused. Vanessa only nodded, and Neville shrugged and tore the paper off a wooden box. The lid lifted off easily to reveal a dark green velvet interior, in which was snugged a heavy gold signet ring.

"We were sad that there wasn't any Hogwarts chapter of the Society when you were at school," Vanessa said hurriedly, though this at least sounded like something that had been rehearsed. "We wrote letters, and Professor Sprout helped, saying that had there been Society you would certainly have been in it and that you were responsible for restarting the Hogwarts chapter this year. And so after we wrote about a dozen letters, they sent us an alumnus ring. For you."

Neville returned his gaze to the ring nestled within the box. Yes, there was the crowned fern that was the seal of the Junior Herbological Society, stamped neatly in relief in the ring, ready to be pressed against a wax seal. Neville swallowed and licked his lips, rendered utterly speechless. "Thank you," he finally managed, looking up. "I'm... this is truly touching." And it was. He was suddenly fervently grateful that this had not been presented to him in front of the entire Hogwarts chapter. It currently consisted of some fourteen teenaged girls in various stages of carefully ignored infatuation and two boys Neville suspected were there for similar reasons. Though they all seemed to harbor an intense interest in herbology in addition to their interest in him, he wasn't sure how they would have reacted to his current state of incoherency. He stood and carefully placed the box with the ring on one of his bookshelves, next to the framed picture of his parents, a manky old string, and a slightly worn Galleon.

"Aren't you going to wear it?" Vanessa asked, sounding slightly crestfallen.

Neville smiled faintly. "I'm up to my elbows in soil and manure several times daily. I'd rather keep it on display with the rest of my treasures, not hidden under a dragonhide glove all day."

"Treasures?" Vanessa went up on tiptoe before she caught herself and sank back down, biting her lip.

Neville chuckled. "Treasures to me, anyway." He took down the Galleon, weighing it in his hand. "This might be the only one of these left now," he mused, almost to himself. "I never knew whether the others kept theirs."

"What is it?" Vanessa asked, peering into his hand.

"This is how Dumbledore's Army arranged meetings," Neville said simply. "It'd get hot, and the numbers around the edge would show the date and time of the meeting. No one ever figured out how we were coordinating things. These were dead useful my last year here, when no one was allowed to talk to one another and I had to figure out a way to get messages between those of us in hiding and those still out in the school." He suddenly noticed that Vanessa's eyes were shining, and he silently cursed himself as he put the Galleon back on the shelf. What a way to feed the fire.

"I read about Dumbledore's Army," she said breathlessly to his back, "and I knew you were in it, but..."

Neville took a deep breath and turned back around. "You probably think I'm some sort of war hero." Vanessa looked rather like she wanted to nod but had caught on to the hint that she shouldn't. "A war hero requires a war, though, and there's not one of those going on at the moment. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, I'm Professor Longbottom. And that means that I have one hundred and twelve papers to mark before I go home for the holidays, because my girlfriend gets cross if I bring my work home with me." He went back around his desk and seated himself, kindly ignoring that Vanessa had seemed to freeze to the spot in front of his bookshelf.

"Oh," she finally said softly. Neville winced inwardly. He did not have to use much imagination to hear the very dramatic sound of an eleven-year-old girl's heart breaking. It was the kindest way he could think of to nip things in the bud, but he somewhat selfishly hoped that Society attendance would not drop because of it. "I'll... that is, I..." She looked suddenly trapped, eyes darting around his office and landing on everything but him.

"I'll see you when term starts again," he said amiably as he picked up a quill, offering what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "And thank you, and everyone in Society, for the ring. I'll have to write some letters soon so I can use it."

"Right," Vanessa said, backing toward the door. "Merry Christmas, Professor."

"Merry Christmas, Miss Perkins." The door shut quietly behind her and Neville sighed. The situation would be so amusing if it weren't happening to him.

It took him the rest of the morning and the better part of the afternoon to even make a dent in the essays, and it wasn't until he paused to rub his eyes wearily that he even noticed he'd skipped lunch entirely and he was fast approaching the dinner hour. His lower back ached, his neck was stiff, and his feet had long ago given up the battle of keeping themselves warm. He rather thought he deserved a break, and vowed that he would never assign weekly essays.

The Great Hall was nearly empty, containing only those students who had stayed for the holiday and opted for an early dinner. Tycho Thatcher, the new Astronomy professor, was sitting alone at the staff table eating soup and reading a _Daily Prophet_ propped up against a flagon of spiced cider. Neville took a seat across from him and spooned some stew from a tureen into his bowl.

He had barely taken his first swallow when a newspaper was shoved into his line of sight on the table in front of him, folded so he could read the headline over his stew: _"AUSTRALIAN INTERCONTINENTAL PORTKEYS FROZEN: Christmas Travel Plans of Hundreds Put on Hold by Search for Dangerous Convict."_ Neville stared at it blankly for several moments before the implications attached to something in his mind, and then he looked up, his jaw slack.

Thatcher nodded grimly. "You're not the only one who has to make some new plans," he said dully. Neville vaguely remembered something about Thatcher's daughter studying abroad in Australia, but something else had just made the connection in his brain and nearly made him drop his fork.

"What sort of dangerous convict?" It was all he could do to not grab the paper out of Thatcher's hands.

"Nothing you need to worry overmuch about," Thatcher said as he relinquished the paper. "A glorified bank robber with a knack for Fiendfyre and a superiority complex. The Enforcers down there will have him soon, but until then, all the Portkeys off the continent are suspended." He spooned some soup into his mouth calmly. "It's inconvenient, is all. If things don't change, I will likely stay here over the holidays."

"I may as well, too," Neville said heavily, scanning the article. "It's not like I have anywhere else to go if Luna can't make it home."

"Perhaps we can work on that joint lesson you proposed," Thatcher suggested. "With the moon phases and the Froglily."

"Yes," Neville replied absently. Excited as he had been at the prospect of such a unique lesson, it was by no means an adequate replacement. He'd had a scant handful of letters from Luna over the past several weeks, both of them too busy to do much more than scribble a few lines here and there. Max was starting to seem extremely put upon and gazed balefully at Neville whenever he was fetched from the owlery to deliver his response to Luna's latest hurried note. Whenever he stopped to consider it, his nerves were stretched very thin, and if he did not get to see her again soon...

"...obviously distracted. You know how to find me. Have a good night, Neville."

"Good night, Tycho," Neville responded, not looking at the other professor as he rose from his seat.

It was Friday, and Christmas was not even until Wednesday. Surely they'd lift the freeze within the next few days. If not...

The last line of the article wriggled its way into the back of his mind and hung there conspicuously.

"_Though Portkeys into Sydney and Melbourne are under surveillance, officials say there are no plans to freeze incoming traffic. "But you may not be able to leave for some time," they warn, "so pack accordingly."_

It was a terrible idea. If the lockdown extended for too long he wouldn't be able to come back to work in time, and then he'd be in trouble. He waved at the notion dismissively and it retreated but did not disappear. In fact, there in the back of his mind, it started making a list of things he should pack, rehearsing what he would tell Professor Sprout, and puzzling out how on earth he was going to find her in the vast expanse of a country he'd only read about.

He finally made a compromise with himself: if Luna wasn't back by Christmas morning, then he'd look into travel options. Perhaps there was a way he could take a boat to New Zealand from Australia and take a Portkey from there. In the meantime, he'd need to head back to his house and pack some additional clothing if he was going to be spending the intervening days here at Hogwarts. Satisfied with himself and his masterful self-restraint, he pushed his mostly empty bowl of stew away and rose from his chair to make the chilly walk out to the gates and Apparate home.

* * *

><p>The moment he re-entered his quarters, Neville knew something was wrong.<p>

He could not put his finger on it, and he slowly lowered the rucksack with his clothes as he glanced around. There wasn't anybody here. Everything looked to be exactly as he'd left it to go to dinner. He'd been gone less than two hours, yet the air seemed somehow tense, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

His eyes lit upon the pocket watch on the low table next to his bed. He'd had Professor Flitwick shield the charm on the watch so he could carry it with him; it was not malfunctioning, and yet it looked different. For a very long moment his mind did not understand what it was seeing, both hands pointing straight down at the 6 at the bottom, and then his heart plummeted icily in his chest. A choking breath was all he could manage when comprehension slammed forcefully into place.

He was not sure how he'd got to the Headmistress's office, but since he was panting, he assumed he had run the whole way - including up four flights of stairs. Supporting himself against the wall with one hand, he finally managed to get out the password between gasps for air, and the gargoyle jumped aside to grant him passage. He straightened and climbed the stairs to pound on the office door, still winded but managing to catch his breath at least slightly while he waited for the footsteps to sound on the other side. Professor McGonagall opened the door with a puzzled expression, which turned abruptly concerned when she took in the look on Neville's face.

He brandished the pocket watch at her. "Luna's in trouble," he said breathlessly. "In Australia. I have to go to her. Now."

"By all means, Longbottom," McGonagall said crisply, standing aside from the doorway. If she was confused by his sudden apparent clairvoyance, or by the way he was waving a watch in her face, she didn't show it. "You can use my fireplace to get to the Three Broomsticks."

Neville nodded, unable to spare the breath to thank her. Ordinarily he avoided traveling by Floo powder, but he didn't know how long she'd been in trouble - he couldn't take the time to walk down past the gates of the school to Apparate. Seconds could make all the difference. He screwed up his eyes tightly and walked into the emerald flames, hesitating only a little. "The Three Broomsticks!" he declared, and he'd barely stopped spinning when he launched himself from the fireplace into the common room of the tavern to shouts from the patrons, knocking over a chair and spilling someone's beverage. "Sorry!" he shouted over his shoulder as he wove between chairs and tables and out into the cobblestone streets of Hogsmeade.

Ignoring the cold and the gritty feeling of ashes on his skin from the Floo, he stopped in the street and forced himself to take a deep breath. Splinching himself on the way to the Portkey hub wouldn't do anyone any good. He pulled the watch from his pocket long enough to ensure the hands weren't drifting - no, they were still pointed steadfastly at the six - and shoved it back in, then took out his wand and turned on his heel.

"Hey now!" was the first thing he heard when the spots before his eyes cleared. Neville took an instant to be embarrassed that he'd Apparated directly in front of the Sydney Portkey desk, rather than the proper Apparation point outside, then pushed it all aside.

"When is your next Portkey for Sydney?" he asked.

The wizard behind the desk shrugged. "Whenever you want, mate. We stopped doing a regular schedule when they froze all the outbound ones. No one wants to go, now."

"Well, I want to go," Neville said firmly. "As soon as you've got one."

"Ten Galleons, and I'll have you on your way."

Neville swore and dug into his pockets, sincerely hoping this was the cloak with - yes, there it was. He hastily counted out ten coins from his money pouch and pushed them across the counter. The wizard behind the counter took an interminable amount of time to put them into the drawer underneath the desk, but finally waved Neville through the turnstile and into the room behind him. Neville ignored the sudden tumult that erupted behind him as he stepped through the archway.

Neville had never had occasion to take a transcontinental Portkey before, but he did not have the presence of mind to admire the glossy slate tile floor or gleaming white walls. Dimly, he could hear someone shouting outside by the desk. "No! He can't go! Perch, stop him! Get him out of there!" A uniformed wizard appeared in the doorway and stretched out a hand as though to grab Neville's arm. Hurriedly, Neville shoved his wand into his robes and put his hand to the stone globe on the pedestal in the middle of the room and -

It was very unpleasantly like being Stunned and thrown backward through the air, except it was more like what he imagined being Stunned and thrown backward off the side of a cliff would be. He closed his eyes to block the dizzying colors and movement and gritted his teeth against the pulling sensation just behind his navel. He hated Portkeys. They always made him feel nauseated, and this one was taking a stupidly long time, although to be fair, it _was_ launching him a good ten thousand miles in less than three minutes. At least it wasn't Floo powder. He had a very good reason to be apprehensive about walking into a fire whether it was enchanted or not; if he could have, Neville would have shuddered.

He was not prepared for the ground suddenly materializing beneath his feet, and he lurched forward to his knees and hands, his head spinning. His lucid first thought was to notice how unreasonably warm it was. The dry, hot air almost seemed to scorch his throat, and sweat beaded on his forehead immediately.

His second thought happened after he raised his eyes to slowly take in the flames that were dancing sinuously in front of him, vivid orange and white and seemingly constrained to the form of a lion - no, a bear - a wolf? The thought was remarkably coherent, even as he pushed himself backward and crabbed away from the flames: _Ah__. That's why it's hot._

He heard an achingly familiar voice call out "Neville!" in an anguished cry, which was very odd, because he was in Australia and no one should've know his name here. No one except -

And then his shoulder was being wrenched and he was pulled roughly to a kneeling position, and a heavily-stubbled man with unkempt brown hair and wild-looking eyes was holding a hand out.

"Your wand," he demanded gruffly. When Neville didn't answer, the man shook him. "Your wand, or you go up in flames."

And that was when his third articulate thought blossomed in his head, and it took into account everything that had happened from his landing up until this point - the fire, the heat, the man twisting his upper arm, Luna somewhere in the hub - and especially the demand for his wand.

The thought was: _Fuck no_.


	15. Elemental Fury

Neville winced as the man twisted his shoulder more. "All right," Neville said carefully, lifting his right hand. "I'm going to reach for my wand. To give it to you," he rushed to add. He reached across his body to the left pocket of his robes and very slowly drew his wand, placing it gingerly into the man's hand, biting his lip.

"Glad we could cooperate," the man said, shoving the wand into the bag at his side. Neville could see several dozen other wands in the bag as well - apparently the man had Disarmed the entire hub. Neville wondered briefly why the man hadn't Disarmed him and then realized that the man's wand, currently in the hand gripping Neville's upper arm, was otherwise occupied with controlling the Fiendfyre that blazed in front of him. Neville let out a shaky breath and sagged against the grasp on his arm.

The man shoved him roughly in the direction of the main concourse. "Get. Go talk to your new friends." There was an accompanying kick to his back when Neville didn't move fast enough, and Neville bit his tongue hard enough to draw blood to keep himself from turning around and glaring.

Several hands reached out to bring him into a clustered circle of people in the middle of the hub, as far away from any flames as they could get. This was no easy task, because every wall of the hub was wreathed in fire, and the Fiendfyre figure was prowling the edges of it, leering at them.

A pair of arms he knew very well wrapped around him forcefully and the body they belonged to slammed into his chest, nearly winding him. Neville held Luna very tightly against him, kissing the crown of her head.

"Luna, what are you doing here?"

Luna pulled back and studied him intently. "I believe I should be asking you that, not the other way around."

"I - Ginny charmed a watch I had, so I could see if you were safe or in danger, and I saw it, and it said you weren't safe, and so -"

"So you thought you'd come down here and fish me out of trouble," Luna said, a slight edge to her voice.

"Look, we can go over how disrespectful of your personal independence I am later," Neville said, lowering his voice. "What are you doing here?"

Luna looked as though she still wanted to upbraid him for his impertinence but realized she would almost certainly lose that argument. "I was camping out here until they reopened the Portkeys," she said finally, brushing hair behind her ears. "I was asleep when he got here, so I don't know how this all started, but when I woke up he was taking everyone's wands and shouting a lot. Before I could even do anything he'd taken mine." There was the slightest tinge of shame to this admission.

Neville took a breath. "You mean to say that everyone here let him take their wand?" He scanned the score or so of people around them, some of whom looked embarrassed.

"Neville, the people here didn't have to defend themselves against Death Eaters," Luna said gently. "Most of them don't even know how to put up a shield. I wouldn't have even known properly if we hadn't taught ourselves. They've had no reason to learn." Her eyes became slightly harder. "Besides. _You_ gave up your wand."

Neville glanced around to make sure the man wasn't within earshot. "Did not."

Luna's eyes went wide. "Yes you did. I saw you."

Neville allowed himself to feel just the tiniest bit of smugness. "What arm was he holding me by?"

Luna's brow wrinkled. "Your left."

"And..."

It was extremely gratifying to see her jaw drop. "You're left-handed."

"And I stow my wand in..."

"Your right pocket," she breathed. "Then what did you...?"

"You're not the only one who can cast a decent glamour," he said, dropping his voice to barely above a whisper. "Though doing it wordlessly with my wand in my pocket while a madman has a fire-thing aimed at me is not the best condition in which to work. I was just waiting for him to suss out it was an illusion."

"So you have a wand," she said, almost just mouthing the last words. "Why didn't you do anything?"

Neville set his jaw and looked over his shoulder at the four-legged Fiendfyre that was still pacing the perimeter of the hub. "I know a thing or two about Fiendfyre. Have to, it was part of training. You can't take control of it once it's slipped the leash, so to speak, but you can't gain control of it unless the person controlling it is alive and conscious."

"So Stunning is out of the question," one of the witches in the circle of people said softly. Neville jumped slightly; he hadn't realized anyone else was listening in.

"Right. If it doesn't knock him out, he at least loses his concentration, and boom - Fiendfyre out of control." He grimaced. "I know how to control it - barely. We had to learn it. But it takes loads of mental preparation, and I didn't have that." He glanced at the man, who was still pacing his circuit of the room. "Has he made any demands?"

Another wizard shook his head. "He hasn't spoken to anyone except us. There are Enforcers outside, of course, but he just sends the Fiendfyre after them when they try to send anyone to talk with him." The man swallowed weakly. "A bunch came through one of the Portkeys, and he just..." The man gestured in a way that suggested flames.

Neville tried to keep the wince from his face, though he wanted desperately to run his hands across it. If the man wasn't making demands, then this was not a hostage situation;he likely had no idea what to do with the people huddled in the middle of the hub. Neville watched the man pace for a few moments; he looked flustered, brittle, and stretched. Neville swallowed.

One of three things was likely to happen in the next several minutes. The first was that the man would become so distressed by his situation that he would lose control of the Fiendfyre, thus killing them all. The second was that the man would become so distressed by his situation that he would commit suicide - thus losing control of the Fiendfyre and killing them all.

Or, because he was a sociopath who had sent several Enforcers up in flames already, he would just skip directly to killing them all.

And that would never do.

A veil seemed to lift from his mind, and he took a slow breath, narrowing his eyes slightly. "All right. Have any of you ever had any training in hand-to-hand combat?" A circle of blank eyes answered him. "No. Of course not." He pursed his lips as he thought. "You and you. Do you think you could grab his arms and get his wand?" Two of the pairs of eyes widened before their owners nodded. "Okay." He rubbed his eyes wearily. "I'm going to take control of the Fiendfyre. He's going to notice. I need someone to take him down, but not until I have control. Otherwise it runs rampant. Do you understand? Do not do _anything_ until I have control of it. And then keep him from, I don't know… _killing me horribly_."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Luna asked. "We don't have wands."

Neville shrugged. "Pile on top of him. Kick him in the head. Do what it takes, because I'm going to need a lot of time to make that thing go away without losing control of it." He glanced at the Fiendfyre with something close to apprehension. "And if I lose control of it..."

He did not need to finish the sentence. The people gathered seemed to hang on his every word.

There was a touch on his arm, and he looked down at Luna, who was biting her lip. "Neville... you don't need to do this. This isn't your job."

"Like hell it's not." He took a deep breath and looked around the circle. "In the interest of full disclosure, I'm an Herbology professor," he told them. "Before that, I ran around with a crew known as Dumbledore's Army." There were expressions of shocked recognition at the name, which was a little surprising. He hadn't realized the story had made it all the way down here.

"She called you Neville," one of the witches said slowly. Whispers began passing around the circle.

Neville bobbed a single nod. "Professor Longbottom, at your service. If I had a hat, I'd tip it. Now," he said, with a great deal more confidence than he felt, "I'm going to get you all out of here. But I'm going to need your help."

This time there were determined nods from the circle. Fascinating, how they were so willing to trust a name from a newspaper.

Luna threw herself at him again. Ignoring the looks of surprise and amusement from the surrounding hostageshe stroked her hair for a moment before tilting her face up for a lingering kiss. Into it he tried to pour everything - all his love, his passion, all the happiness he'd ever felt with her - because there was a very real possibility that this might be the last chance he'd get.

"Right then." He took another deep breath and closed his eyes. "Give me a few moments. This is going to be... a little difficult."

Fiendfyre and Patronuses had a surprising amount in common. For one, they were very difficult to conjure, and they required concentration to control. For another, they were composed mainly of strong emotion. However, the way they were different was what made Fiendfyre so difficult to control. With a Patronus, it required happiness bordering on euphoria.

With Fiendfyre, it required rage bordering on insanity.

It was not an emotion Neville was accustomed to gathering. He'd needed a potion to get properly worked up enough in the Dark Arts seminar. But it was incredible what a person was capable of when faced with certain death.

His eyes still closed, he summoned forth every memory he could, every memory he tried to avoid. Bellatrix Lestrange in the Department of Mysteries, taunting him about his parents. Amycus Carrow, laughing with glee as he relentlessly cast the Cruciatus Curse upon first-years. First-years, bloody _children_. The way those children had cried out with phantom pains at night in the common room, where all the younger students had taken to sleeping because it felt safer with the older students watching over them. The fact that none of them had felt safe in their own beds. Alecto Carrow, face stretched into a rictus of delight as she watched Luna writhe in unspeakable pain on the floor. Voldemort insinuating that Neville would stoop so low as to join his ranks. The rows of dead in the corner of the Great Hall, beyond anyone's help.

Normally, he would shy away from these thoughts, but now he welcomed them, let them fill him with a terrible boiling in the pit of his stomach. He opened his eyes, his face contorted into an expression that he knew had to be frightening, but at the moment, he just didn't care.

This stupid man, this idiot, this son of a _bitch_, was holding these innocent people in fear, holding their death warrants as surely as if he were pointing his wand at each of their throats. Putting his Luna in danger. Putting her in a situation where she would be stolen from him, and if he'd been just a few seconds slower, he'd never have known what happened to her.

To say there was a small, rational part of his mind that actually noticed what was happening as it occurred would be an outright lie. Flashes of lucidity were all that bubbled to the surface, a collage of sanity quickly overpowered by the force of primal fury so strong it made his chest hurt, though that could have been because he'd begun breathing so heavily. Slowly, purposefully, he reached for his wand and nodded once at the others in the circle. They tensed.

There was not actually an incantation to wrest away control of someone else's Fiendfyre. All that was required was to channel just enough fury in just the correct way to snap the Fiendfyre's allegiance from one wand to another. It was far easier said than done, and simply pointing a wand and throwing anger around did not seem to be nearly enough to unleash the seething force that was making him tremble, so as Neville whipped his wand in front of him, he bellowed the vilest and most gut-wrenching epithet he could manage.

He would never be able to remember exactly what he'd said with such conviction, but it certainly grabbed the man's attention. His head snapped around and his eyes widened, and for the briefest of moments, Neville worried that he'd distracted the man enough that he'd lost control of the Fiendfyre. But no, he definitely still had it, and he knew exactly what Neville was doing, because his eyes narrowed again and he jabbed his wand in Neville's direction. The constantly-changing Fiendfyre creature bounded towards Neville, leaving a trail of white flame in its wake.

Neville could hear the people behind him screaming as the Fiendfyre closed the distance, the searing heat preceding it in a shimmering wave. A thin tendril of panic curled through the pit of his stomach. He couldn't do it. He wasn't nearly good enough. His stupid ego, his stupid _hero complex_, was going to get all these people killed because he thought he could do something that he wasn't cut out to do.

The wisp of panic ignited and exploded.

This time, even a foul stream of horrific profanity wasn't enough to satisfy him. His throat burned as the wordless, guttural howl of visceral rage escaped, ripped from somewhere deep within his bones. His wand grew excruciatingly hot in his hand, and the Fiendfyre - suddenly in the form of a charging lion - drew itself up short, roaring soundlessly at him.

Behind him, he could hear several people utter their own shouts of anger and defiance as they launched themselves at the man. Neville's attention, however, was on the Fiendfyre beast in front of him, and the elemental storm of fury that had him at the eye.

A Patronus dissolved as soon as the caster's happiness dissolved. It was a similar principle with Fiendfyre, but simply ceasing to be angry was laughable at the levels of rage required to sustain and control Fiendfyre. Happiness could disappear as quickly as a pricked bubble, but anger smoldered. Having summoned this rage on his own, Neville was discovering that a proper fury was self-propagating. His left shoe was tied too tightly. His shoulder hurt where that stupid idiot had grabbed him. The grip of his wand was slick with sweat. A shock of slightly too-long hair had fallen into his eyes. All of these tiny things absolutely infuriated him, sweeping him up in a tidal wave of furor that left him barely able to think. His hand was shaking, not of fatigue or fear, but because, even channeling all this ire into the form before him, there was still too much for him to contain.

This was what made Fiendfyre so dangerous. Once begun, it was nigh impossible to stop.

Neville clenched his jaw but didn't dare close his eyes as he started slowly counting back from ten in his mind. He tried throwing useless calming images into his mind, babbling brooks and sunsets and teddy bears, but they swirled into incoherency as his frustration grew and fed the livid rage throbbing in his marrow.

There was a touch on his shoulder, and though he did not take his eyes off the Fiendfyre, he knew exactly who it was. "Get off!" he snarled, roughly shrugging her hand away.

"Slow your breathing," Luna said softly. "Deep breaths. You're breathing too fast. It's keeping your heart rate up."

It was hard. His body was demanding air, as much of it as he could take in, and for the first few deep breaths he gulped, spots swam before his eyes. Excruciatingly slowly, he gained more control over the rise and fall of his chest.

"Good. Now let your shoulders go soft. They're tighter than bedsprings. Let them drop. Like a handful of sand through an hourglass."

The visual was somehow calming. He took another shuddering breath and let his lids drop just slightly as he imagined all the roiling anger within him draining slowly from him. His shoulders ached abominably as the tension slipped from them by tiny degrees.

"You can let it go now."

He was astonished to find that he could.

The billowing heat before him winked out in a bright flash, and the dull roar of the flames that had been present since he had first landed vanished, leaving the hub in a deafening silence. Someone had extinguished the fires engulfing the walls, and all that remained were the smoldering supports.

The local law enforcement was pouring in now, wands at the ready, unable to hide the confusion on their faces as they came upon the scene: a dozen or more witches and wizards holding down the escaped criminal, who struggled and writhed beneath them uselessly, his wand lying several feet away on the ground. A youngish man in winter clothing dropping to his knees, with a young blond lady rubbing his neck. A bag full of wands spilling over next to the fugitive. A smoking husk that had once been a busy intercontinental Portkey hub.

Neville worked his way to his feet, weaving only slightly before putting his arm around Luna's shoulders. "Let's go home," he said wearily. Luna nodded and calmly went to gather her satchel, singed but intact, from under a bench in the middle of the hub.

Someone who looked fairly official approached Neville. "I'm Enforcer Rogers. They're all saying you're Neville Longbottom."

It wasn't a question, so Neville did not feel particularly obliged to answer. "You've got your criminal. I'd really like to go home now."

"We need to get a statement -"

"I'll owl one to you. I want to get out of here before all the press shows up." He was being unreasonably brusque, he knew, but exhaustion was starting to win the war against adrenaline, and he wanted to be well out of sight before that happened.

"I'm afraid -"

"Sorry to hear that. You can contact me at Hogwarts." He nodded in the direction of the gathered people. "They're not wrong about who I am. Now. Please. Get someone to take me and my girlfriend by Portkey to London."

The Enforcer looked perplexed, and he opened his mouth as though to say something else, and then wavered as Neville stared at him with an utterly emotionless, blank face. Finally, the Enforcer shrugged and turned to another Enforcer, snapping an order at him that Neville didn't bother to listen to.

It could have been minutes, and it could have been an hour, but all Neville really cared about was that, finally, Luna was leading him to a cut crystal sphere that they placed their hands upon to begin their journey home.

* * *

><p>It was raining, that chill winter rain that should be sleet or snow if it had any decency about it. Neville shivered uncontrollably as he slowly began to make his way up the path to his house, Luna doing everything but holding him up. His head pounded and his stomach roiled, and finally, he slipped from Luna's arm and stumbled to his hands and knees on the side of the path.<p>

"Neville? What are - oh," Luna said in a small voice as he began noisily emptying his stomach.

He heaved until his muscles spasmed and there was nothing left to bring up, and then he still hacked and coughed, the taste of bile and ashes and smoke strong on his tongue. He leaned back to settle on his heels, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, only peripherally aware of the rain beating down upon him. He noticed the cold, but in the way one notices whether it is light or dark: an observation, not something that could actually touch him.

He heard Luna sit down next to him on the muddy ground and take his hand. They sat in silence in the rain, Neville spitting off to the side to rid himself of the taste in his mouth.

"Do you get it now?" he finally asked, not looking at her. "If I were an Auror, I'd be doing shit like that every damn day."

He felt rather than saw Luna's slow, thoughtful nod. "Has it always been like this? Afterwards?"

Neville knew she was asking about more than Auror training. He nodded hollowly. "Every time. I just never let anyone else see." The rain drummed on the ground and their shoulders and backs. Luna was studying him solemnly. "How did you know I needed to calm down?" he asked.

"It was quite obvious, wasn't it?" She tilted her head to the side in that birdlike way of hers.

"No, I mean - how did you know that was part of getting rid of the Fiendfyre? How'd you know I was having trouble?"

Her eyes grew slightly wider. "I didn't. I... you looked so... I didn't like seeing you like that. You didn't look like you. I was scared you were lost, like a firefly in a hurricane."

He did not want to admit how close to being right she was. He felt a hand rub lightly along his back through his cloak, and his bone weariness came crashing to his attention. He pushed himself reluctantly to his feet, using Luna's shoulder for balance. She unfolded herself gracefully, Vanished the mess he'd made on the ground, and took him firmly by the hand to lead him inside.

Clean and dry and warming underneath a down blanket with Luna next to him, Neville finally started to let his tense muscles relax when Luna said, softly, "I've been home a for a full hour and you haven't asked me to stay yet."

Neville sighed heavily, too tired to be irritated. "I'm about three seconds away from passing out. I'll fight with you tomorrow about it."

"I'd rather do it now. Get it out of the way. Otherwise, I'll be tiptoeing all holiday waiting for it. I promise I'll make it short."

He sighed again. "Fine. Will you please stay home this time?"

"Yes."

There was a beat. The half of Neville's brain that was already asleep leapt awake in a disoriented blur. "What?"

"I'll stay this time. Because life is short, and if you hadn't shown up today, I don't know if I'd have ever got the opportunity to live it with you." She nuzzled against his neck. "And because it's terribly inappropriate for the princess to go and get herself in trouble again after the prince just rescued her."

Neville could not think of any words. His mind was thick and clouded with fatigue. He buried his face in her tousled hair and inhaled deeply. "We'll fight about it tomorrow, when you're not feeling so grateful," he mumbled. She might have responded, but he was asleep before he'd truly finished his own sentence.


	16. Scarlet Poppinese

With the ordeal of Australia safely behind them, things quickly settled into a fairly predictable pattern. Assuming it was not his week to stay at Hogwarts overnight, Neville would Apparate home at half five every evening. If there were no lights in the window, he would hastily run down the list of dinners he knew how to cook and usually have something ready on the table by the time Luna would wander in with a new stack of library books, naturalist journals, and note-scrawled parchment.

They ate spaghetti a lot.

If there were lights in the window, Neville learned rapidly that having any expectations whatsoever would often lead to confusion. Depending on what fancy struck her, when Luna made dinner, meatballs and pancakes had equal odds of ending up on the plate, occasionally together.

Mornings, he rolled out of bed earlier than he cared to dwell upon, showered, dressed quietly so as not to wake her up, and slipped down to the kitchen to put the kettle on for her. It would keep the water hot until she woke a few hours later. Shouldering his bag, he'd lock the door behind him and stride to the bottom of the walk to Apparate to the gates of Hogwarts for breakfast.

They learned ground rules. Neville was not to bring schoolwork home with him. He ignored this rule as frequently as Luna ignored the rule about leaving open ink bottles on the kitchen chairs. This, predictably, led to friction until both of them wordlessly agreed to overlook that the other was ignoring the rules. Neville was to keep his chattering about plants to a minimum if he wished Luna to keep her chattering about unlikely magical creatures at bay. And Neville was not, under any circumstances, to ever mention anything about the schoolgirl crushes he was surrounded by every day - unless he really, really wanted strenuous, possessive "you are mine" sex that night, complete with teeth, so he tried to work it into conversation at least once a week.

And woven into this pattern, about every eleven days, they would have a terrible fight. Today, they were two days overdue, and Neville felt like he was walking on eggshells.

It was a Sunday morning. Neville had made toast, sat in the chair without an open bottle of emerald or violet ink on it, and opened his lesson planner. She'd sunk into the chair across from him with a cup of tea and the _Daily Prophet_.

"I'm thinking of patching up the greenhouse out back this summer," he said absently as he made a note in a margin. It was odd for Fox to have missed a homework assignment; he'd have to speak to him about that, make sure nothing was going on.

"Really," Luna responded with a slight edge to her voice. "I thought we were going to the Amazon this summer."

"We still are." Neville looked up. "But we won't be spending the entire time there. Just a few weeks."

"You said two months." She was looking imperiously over the edge of the paper at him. He very suddenly felt as though he were on perilously thin ice.

"I'd love to stay for two months," he said mildly, "except I only have one month of holiday before I have to be back at Hogwarts. To prepare for the next school year."

"Oh."

That was all. Just "Oh." One of his eyebrows lifted in mild surprise, and he lowered his head back to the page in his planner.

"So when are we working on the greenhouse?"

He shrugged and did not look up. "Afternoons. Weekends. Whenever I'm not at work, basically. It doesn't need that much attention; probably a week would do it."

"And then I imagine you'll be spending all your free time out there with your plants?"

He recognized this tone. He began the preparations for bracing himself. "Of course not. Probably early mornings, since you're not awake then."

She seemed to examine this statement in her head, as though trying to find something wrong with it. "Oh."

He was getting very jumpy.

"Would you mind terribly if I stayed in the Amazon for a little while after you leave, then? The subjects I want to study don't stay in one place for me, and it may take me a while to find them."

It was a perfectly reasonable request. In fact, he owed it to her. She had been home for two months without a word of traveling, beyond mentions of this holiday. That was probably the reason why he was so surprised to hear "And what's _that _supposed to mean?" coming out of his mouth. Like usual, he wished he could pluck the words out of the air before they fell on her ears.

Luna didn't even look shocked. She had apparently been expecting this overdue spat as well. "Nothing. Just that my research requires more than sitting in one spot and doodling pictures of leaves so I can look them up in a book later." Had he not known her so well, her tone would have been innocuous. Neville recognized it immediately as lofty.

Neville sighed heavily. "Really? This is what we're going to fight about? Is there nothing better we can come up with?"

"You forgot to buy eggs," Luna offered.

"_You_ forgot to buy eggs. You went to the shop last."

"Right, because you forgot to buy sugar when you last went."

"If it's not on the list, I'm not going to - oh, for cripe's sake." Neville rubbed his temples. "I've an idea. How about we just don't fight? Can we do that? For one weekend? Can we just have a day when I don't have to watch every word I say?"

"I don't know; can we?" Luna asked archly. "It seems to be a favorite pastime for you."

"I'm being serious." He reached across the table to take her hand. "I'm tired of it. I thought that when we started seeing each other every day, things would get better, and they've just got worse. And it's the same things, over and over. I don't like that, and I don't think you do either."

Luna shook her head. "I don't. I don't sit here trying to come up with ways to dig at you. I don't know what we even have to fight about."

"Eggs, apparently." Neville squeezed her hand. "Or comparative research tactics. I think that if we put our minds to it, we could have a row about nearly anything."

"Could not."

"Don't."

"Sorry." She heaved a long sigh and got up from her chair, walking around the table to sit in his lap with her arms around him, chin resting on his shoulder. "I thought it would get better too. I don't know why it's not, and it's terrifying and I don't know how we're going to make it if we can't even talk about eggs. Or the lack of eggs. Eggs are delicious, and they don't deserve to be the topic of arguments. How can we make things work if we fight about eggs?"

"We will." Neville rubbed her back lightly. "We will. I promise. I love you. We'll make it better."

* * *

><p>A new pattern began to emerge. It looked a great deal like the old pattern - the same meals and timetable, the same ground rules. But every eleven days, there were a lot more bitten tongues and stony silences that would eventually give way to halted conversation, and whatever slight had been sparked seemed not so important for a little while.<p>

But, just as predictably, something like this Saturday afternoon in the middle of May would happen. It didn't happen every Saturday, or even alternating Saturdays, but it happened with enough frequency that a constant tightness settled between Neville's shoulder blades.

Ron striding purposefully through the doors of the pub, followed closely by Harry, was not a part of the pattern. That was new. Neville looked up in surprise as both Ron and Harry seated themselves to either side of him at the bar, their faces matching thunderclouds.

"And just what are you on about, making her cry like that?" Ron demanded.

"She wasn't crying when I left," Neville protested. "She never cries around me." He emptied the glass in his hand, and either this liquor wasn't strong enough or he'd deadened all sensation in his throat. "Never cries, never screams, never gets angry. Not really angry. She'll snap; she'll snap at me, but she never loses her temper. Or cries."

Harry was looking in bemused horror at the glass tumblers in front of Neville. "Neville, please tell me you've been here a few hours."

"Nearly forty-five minutes," Neville replied darkly. He blinked with surprise as Harry snatched the glass from his hand and began stacking the tumblers with enough force to make the barman look over.

"This," Harry said firmly, "is so amazingly stupid and unhealthy that I'm not even sure where to begin yelling at you."

"He's done," Ron announced to the barman. "Except water. Bring him some of that."

The barman shrugged and brought over a glass of water. "I gave him sarsaparilla for his last two," he said in a stage whisper. "I don't think he noticed."

"Thanks, Joey," Neville said in a tone dripping with sarcasm. "You're a real friend."

Harry made an exasperated noise and flicked Neville on the ear. "It's not even two and you're on the piss," he said sternly, ignoring Neville's venomous look as he rubbed his ear. "Your girlfriend is crying on my fiancée's shoulder in my sitting room, and Hermione is about to tear you in two as soon as she can get her hands on you. And this isn't even the first time." He folded his arms in front of him. "You have exactly five minutes to explain yourself, and I don't even know why I'm giving you that long."

"We had a fight," Neville said, staring determinedly at his glass of water. "That's all."

"No," Ron said, and Neville could see him shaking his head in the reflective varnish on the bar. "Fights don't end with one party crying and the other pickling his liver. I'm sick of pretending it's your problem to deal with, mate. When my wife tells me to look for you and find out what happened, then you've _made_ it my problem." Ron leaned forward. "Trust me. I know fighting. I'm good at it. You two don't fight. You get right down to the most efficient ways to hurt each other, and you've been spending five months practicing."

"So are you here to give me a scolding or a shoulder?" Neville asked acidly. "Because I don't really want either."

"We haven't decided yet," Harry said coldly. "Maybe you can help us by telling us why you called her worthless."

"_What?_" Neville was on his feet somehow, not sure how he got there. His bar stool was knocked over; maybe he had fallen out. "I never said that! I would never say that! I love her! We had a bloody row, but I love her and I would never, ever call her that! And if you think I would, even for one second, then we're done here." He tried to stalk over to grab his cloak, but the floor pitched under him, and he had to grab at the back of a chair to stay upright. All right, fine, maybe the fourth whiskey had been overkill. And everything after that. And, to be honest, most of what had come before that, as well.

"Okay," Ron said, suddenly at his back and grabbing his shoulder. "Okay. I might have overheard incorrectly. Let's just sit down, and we'll hear your side."

"No." Neville shrugged harshly. "We're done."

"You're not, because you haven't paid your tab and we're not going to pay it for you," Harry said, and his grip was much firmer on Neville's upper arms. "Now sit."

Neville had no choice but to slouch into the high-backed chair into which Harry slung him, arms crossed belligerently in front of him. He grinned sarcastically for a split second as Ron plunked the glass of water down in front of him on the table.

"She was complaining - again - that I'd brought some essays home to mark over the weekend. As though they're just going to mark themselves if I leave them on my desk."

"And then you said?" Harry pressed.

Neville fidgeted. "I... may have said something about her book."

"Which was?"

Neville sighed heavily. "Something like 'people are actually going to notice if I don't do my work, unlike your book.'" He swallowed. "I may have said 'bloody book.'" He looked up defensively. "She's always working on it, right there at the kitchen table, as though we didn't turn the extra bedroom into a perfectly good study where she can spread out all her stupid notes and maps – what?" Harry had adopted an incredulous expression.

"You used to trash the house so thoroughly you'd need Hermione's help to clean it, and you're getting bent out of shape over where she works on her book?" Harry asked in disbelief.

"I don't do that _anymore_," Neville muttered, well aware of how hypocritical it sounded when the proper context wasn't given. He'd _made a space_ for her to be comfortable and she completely ignored it. He was about to say so when Ron held up a hand.

"What else did you say about the book?" he asked in an even tone.

Neville shook his head. "First, she said something snippy about the importance of making sure some twelve-year-old doesn't mistake dandelions for Puffblooms. And I said yes, actually, it is important, because that's what I'm teaching right now. And that it was certainly more important than some... worthless..." His eyes dropped to the table and he swallowed. "Some worthless travelogue that she keeps trying to write." He cleared his throat. "It kind of went downhill from there."

Harry lowered his forehead to the table and thunked it there a few times. Ron made do with hiding his face in his hands before taking a deep breath through his nose.

"Neville, I am going to channel every woman I've ever known or been related to right now, so please don't be startled." Ron's dropped his hands from his face. "You are an insensitive, selfish prick."

"I know." Neville couldn't decide whether Harry's approach or Ron's was better, so he combined the two. It made his knuckles hurt.

"You owe her an apology for callingcalling _her life's work_ worthless ," Ron continued ruthlessly.

"I know -"

"- And so help me, if you don'tdon't end this relationship soon, I'm not sure if we can keep being friends."

"I kn - what?" Neville looked up mid-thunk.

"You heard me." Ron reached over and slapped Neville's hands away from his face. "Look at yourself, Neville. You've got a good job, a house, and a girlfriend, and you're pissed in a pub in the middle of a Saturday. Something isn't right, and it's eating you alive. It isn't the job, and I don't know what a house can do to you, so really..."

"I happen to love my girlfriend," Neville said, straightening in his chair and fixing Ron with the steeliest glare he could manage. "And I will do whatever I have to do to make things work out. I literally walked through fire for her. I'll do anything for her. That's what you _do_ when you love someone."

"Really?" Harry gestured around the empty pub. "Because this is an odd way of going about it. What with being nowhere near her and drunk off your tits."

"I was spending time appreciating what a truly terrible human being I am," Neville grumbled. "As that seems to be the general consensus around here. Are we done?" He stood pointedly.

"Neville," Harry said wearily, and he did not look happy. "Scarlet Poppinese."

"What about it?" Neville was digging through his pockets for his money pouch. He knew he'd brought it.

"Properties."

The page in _1,000 Magical Plants and Fungi_ seemed to float before Neville's eyes reflexively. "Powerful opiate. Highly addictive. But it'll poison you from the bones outward if you take too much of it, and everyone eventually does if they think they're smart enough to self-medicate." He sighed as what Harry was trying to do occurred to him. "You're going to turn this into a deep, insightful metaphor for my relationship, aren't you?"

"That... was kind of the aim, yes." Harry at least had the dignity to look embarrassed.

"Look." Neville finally fished his money pouch from his pocket and started slamming Galleons down on the table. "My girlfriend and I had a fight. That's it. Fights _happen_. This was a bad one. Was it our first bad one? Hell no. Will it be our last bad one? Hell no. We've been together a year and a half. The shine and corners have worn off the relationship, and we're finally getting down to what it's really about. And so we're going to fight. And I don't need you, or you, to give me advice on how to be in a relationship just because you're both in your own." He pointed a finger at Harry. "If you try to use the poison metaphor on me again, we're through." He moved the finger to Ron. "And according to you, we're already through. _Shut it_," he snapped when Ron opened his mouth in protest. "You issued me an ultimatum, which basically boiled down to 'me or your girlfriend.'" He shook his head. "You're the biggest bloody fool I've ever met if you didn't know how that one was going to end up."

"You're not nearly as drunk as you seemed," Harry said into the silence a few moments later.

"No. I'm not." Neville picked up the glass of water and started to drain it.

"She's not the poison," Harry said hurriedly. "That's not what I was trying to say. The relationship is. You're both holding on to something so tight that you can't see that it's bad for you both."

Neville slammed the empty glass down on the table and took several deep breaths. "I overpaid. Have some drinks on me. To friendship." He turned roughly and started to walk towards his cloak. "Enjoy the last round I'll ever buy for you."

* * *

><p>He'd paced the length of Hogsmeade so many times that he'd lost count, and the alcohol haze had worn down to nothing but a dull thudding behind his eyes. He was willing to admit that his parting words to Harry and Ron had been perhaps slightly more dramatic than the situation warranted. But then, they'd been slightly more judgmental about his personal business than the situation warranted, so it all worked out. And really, it had driven him to finally make the decision he'd been tossing around for a while.<p>

He paused for a moment outside the door of the shop, taking a deep breath and steeling himself.

The bells above the door chimed playfully as he entered. Lamps illuminated the shop, reflecting off the glass display cases, making the entire interior dazzle. A grandfatherly man looked up from a ledger in the back of the shop in response to the bells and looked Neville over.

"Good afternoon. What can I do for you today, young sir?"

Neville licked his lips, suddenly feeling very flushed. "I'd like some help picking out an engagement ring, please."


	17. Some Horrible Dream

"An engagement ring," the grandfatherly man said in a pleased tone. "I suppose congratulations are in order."

Neville nodded, a foolish grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Yeah. I've taken long enough, I think."

"And how long is that?" The man asked, hoisting himself up from his chair to approach him and extend a hand over the top of the display cases. "The name's Willard, by the way."

"Neville. And we've been dating a year and a half, but I've known her for..." He counted in his head. "Almost seven years."

"Well then, I imagine you've had quite some time to think about what kind of ring she'd like." Willard gestured over the display cases. "Any ideas?"

Neville shook his head. "Not really. I've never thought about jewellery before. Ever." He smiled sheepishly. "I don't even know where to start. She doesn't tend to wear jewellery, unless she's made it herself."

"Oh? What kind of jewelry does she make?"

Neville laughed. "When I first met her, she was wearing earrings that looked like radishes. The last thing I saw her wearing was a bracelet made of empty Gobstones."

When Willard smiled, the edges of his eyes crinkled. Neville decided that he liked him. "So what you're saying is that you're likely looking for something a little more unusual than the traditional diamond solitaire." He crooked a finger for Neville to follow him down the line of cases until they paused in front of one near the back of the shop. "This is where the odd ones live," he said by way of explanation. "They aren't received well, for one reason or another - too ornate, don't look enough like an engagement ring, don't have a diamond." He chuckled. "As though a diamond's the only way to propose."

Neville skimmed over a few of the rows, dismissing any with filigreed vines or leaves outright. He might like those, but he was fairly sure that was a one-way ticket to some pointed bickering should he bring one home. "I do think I want something that at least looks like an -" His breath caught and he glanced upward.

The twinkle in Willard's eye was unmistakable. "Seen it, have you? Let me guess which one." He jabbed a finger at a rose gold ring set with a square, velvet black stone, flanked by a sapphire on either side. Tiny sapphires twinkled along the band to disappear into the velvet in which the ring was nestled.

Neville nodded. He wasn't quite sure how to describe the restless twisting his stomach was doing right at that moment. He licked his lips. "That's it. That's the one." His brow furrowed for a moment. "I feel like that should have been harder."

Willard chuckled and clapped Neville on the shoulder. "Sometimes it is. Sometimes you just know." He nodded down at the ring. "Black diamond, that is. One of the darkest I ever did see. The shape's called a princess cut. Not one you often see in engagement rings."

"Can I see it more closely?" Neville asked as he leaned forward. _And faint at the price tag?_ he didn't add.

"Well, see, here's the thing," Willard said. "I'm not actually the jeweler. My son is. He's taking yesterday's deposit to Gringotts right now, and he's got the keys with him." He tapped on the glass of the display case. "Now, I can probably get past his locking enchantments if I put my mind to it, but he'll be back in a trice, so why bother? Let's take a moment and get to know one another."

Neville stared blankly as Willard ambled over to two armchairs near the front of the shop. He'd never encountered a shopkeeper that wanted to know any more about him than his vault number at Gringotts and what size trousers he wanted to buy. Was it because he was on the verge of signing over what had to be at least three hundred Galleons? Was this what rich people felt like? No, rich people probably expected it, and he was still staring in befuddlement at the armchair opposite the one Willard now occupied. He walked over with what felt like unseemly haste and lowered himself into the chair awkwardly.

"So tell me about her," Willard said easily, as though he held conversations with nervous young men about to affiance themselves every day. Perhaps he did. Perhaps that was his entire role at this shop, because Neville already felt himself relaxing slightly, despite the headache waxing and waning behind his eyes.

"Her name's Luna," he began, gratefully accepting a cup of tea that Willard summoned from a back room. "We met at school. We were in different houses - she was a Ravenclaw, I was a Gryffindor - but we became best friends. You can't go through what we did and not be close, I guess." He took a sip and marveled at the cup for a moment - just slightly oversteeped, exactly the right amount of sugar, and no milk. He was beginning to like Willard more and more. "Last year, she came home from traveling - she used to travel about a lot - and started helping me with my studies in Auror training. We were spending loads of time together, and things just... happened."

Willard took a sip of his own tea, careful to keep his moustaches out of it. "Why do you want to ask her to marry you?" he asked pleasantly.

"Because I love her," Neville said, staring. Was that not obvious? "I want to spend the rest of my life making her happy."

"Ah," Willard said sagely, nodding. "That's a good answer. It's the right answer, too, if anyone else asks you." He leaned forward, his sparkling eyes suddenly very intent. "But it's not the true answer, is it, son?"

Neville felt a sudden chill skate down his spine. "What do you mean?"

Willard just gave him a knowing look over his tea.

Ripples lapped against the edges of the cup as Neville fidgeted. "I do love her. That is the reason. And this way I can show her that no matter how hard things get, I'll love her forever."

"Closer," Willard conceded, "But still not the complete truth." He gestured toward the door. "You came into this shop with the grimmest look I've ever seen. I've watched you the whole afternoon passing by the window, pacing back and forth like a lost thundercloud. That's not the look of a lad who's just discovered he wants to spend his life with his lady." He set his cup down on the low table between the chairs. "Are things hard right now?"

Neville nodded mutely. His throat suddenly seemed too thick to swallow the tea, so he placed his cup on the table as well. He instantly regretted it, as now his hands had nothing to occupy them.

"I don't want to lose her," he found himself saying in a very small, desperate voice. He studied his knees very intently, his fingers curling and uncurling over the bones. "I don't want it all to have been for nothing. I don't know how else to fix it."

"Look at me," Willard said gently, and as Neville looked up in surprise, he found he could not tear his eyes away from the old man's face. "Do you really think this will fix it?"

Neville finally let his gaze drop back down to his knees, and he shook his head numbly. "No," he said in a broken voice. "It's already over. It's been over for a while now." The words seemed to be coming from somewhere else, from someone else, because certainly he couldn't have been saying them so calmly.

"Do you even want to fix it?"

Neville's heart was pounding in his ears. Did he? They'd been so happy. But he'd be a fool to think they could return to those days bright with novelty, and once those days had dimmed to the steady glow of everyday, especially with Luna at home now...

He tried to tell himself he was staying late at Hogwarts more often to do his job. That their discussions became heated because they were passionate about their differences. That she did not resent him for keeping her home and near him, no matter that he was doing nothing of the sort, and it was her decision and she should stop blaming him for it...

"No," he whispered, throat burning.

"And there it is." Willard's tone was soft, almost sorrowful. "It's hard to hear, isn't it?" Neville nodded. "But you needed to hear it. What's more, you needed to drag it out of your cerebrum there, because you wouldn't have believed anyone else if they told you."

"I love her." It sounded plaintive, pleading.

"Son, I don't doubt that you love her with all the glow of the ever-changing moon," Willard replied. "But trying to keep someone from leaving is one of the three worst reasons to get married." His eyes seemed to pierce into Neville's skull. "Especially when the person you're trying to keep from leaving is yourself."

It felt like a hammer had struck him in the chest. "I'm not your son," Neville mumbled, feeling as though he should be protesting _something_ this man was saying, as he couldn't bring himself to deny anything else.

"No. You're not. But I know who you are. And so I know that the man who should be having this talk with you is unable." Willard politely turned his head to look out the window as Neville hastily thumbed a tear from one eye.

Neville sighed, composing himself. It felt like he was ripping his soul in two. "Do you make a habit of convincing people they shouldn't give you money?"

"Neville," Willard said, and all hints of the jovial old man had fled. "The only thing I hate more than having some young lad return an engagement ring is having to look at how their shoulders sag and meet their hollow eyes." He shook his head. "It's a terrible pain, a contagious thing. And if I can help a fellow such as yourself by telling you things your friends can't bring themselves to say, then it's more than worth my time."

"My friends did try to tell me." It felt difficult to breathe. He twined his fingers together, feeling as though he were on the verge of falling apart. "I didn't want to listen."

Willard nodded. "You've friends that are worth their weight in gold, then. Fight to keep them around."

Neville swallowed. "I think I've already lost them."

"You'd be surprised how hard it is to drive away a friend, especially when they know you need them." Willard drew his wand from his sleeve and tapped the two teacups, which began to steam gently, before picking up his own. "I somehow get the feeling that they're not as gone as you think."

"They don't - they can't understand." Something was building up between his shoulders, stiffening his spine in what he distantly recognized as a low-grade panic. "They've never had problems like this, they don't know what it's like to... to know a relationship's over." He tripped over those last words, as though saying them aloud would make the situation more real than it already was. "I'm the only one who's not married to or marrying their first girlfriend - real girlfriend, anyway - and..."

"True," Willard interjected when it was apparent Neville had run out of words. "They don't know. They can't even begin to come close to relating to what you're feeling. But that doesn't mean that they don't want to be there while you heal. It doesn't mean that they're not going to try as hard as they can to understand."

Neville tried a weak, wavering smile. "You're good at this."

Willard shrugged. "It's a curse. Or rather, it's careful, polite, and judicious application of minor Legilimency." Neville looked up, startled. "Oh, nothing sinister, and nothing prying. Think of it as magically enhanced empathy. Any shopkeeper worth his salt does it almost subconsciously."

Neville had no room to judge; he was not entirely innocent of using the bare bones of Legilimency himself, particularly when Fox was wearing one of his smug faces. At any rate, there were too many emotions whirling about in his chest to add anger to them without flying to pieces. He took a deep, shaky breath.

"Your son isn't actually taking the deposit, is he?"

"I don't even have a son," Willard replied easily.

"You never intended to sell me that ring."

"I was going to do my best to avoid it, yes. Thankfully, I seem to have brought you round." His eyes took on that piercing quality again. "You deserve to be happy just as much as anyone else. You're not a monster just because this relationship doesn't make you happy."

Neville closed his eyes and lowered his face into one hand. "I don't know what to do. I'm... bad at figuring things out on my own. I freeze."

Willard nodded and handed Neville the teacup that was still sitting on the table. "You know what you have to do. There's only one thing _to_ do, really."

With a sickening emptiness, Neville knew the shopkeeper was right. He lifted the cup to his lips, not tasting the tea as he drank the last few swallows. As he stood, he felt as though he were leaving his stomach behind in the chair, and an oppressive weight pushed against his chest as he tried to take a deep breath.

"I guess I'm going home."

* * *

><p>There was a light in the window.<p>

It was only just twilight, nowhere near true night. The mild heat of the late spring day hung over the path like a thin fog.

Each step seemed to take him no closer to the door. Dread began piling on in thick, sickly layers as Neville spotted Luna sitting at the window seat, back to the glass, immersed in something. Reading, or writing, or maybe just staring into empty space. He felt oddly cold, despite the balmy evening, and suddenly his hand was on the doorknob and his stomach twisted.

She looked up as he walked in, and the expression on her face - hopeful, timid, apprehensive - made something in his chest ache fiercely. It couldn't possibly be his heart: the feeling was far too large to attribute to such a small thing.

Wordlessly, she rose from the bench and walked over to him. He tried to keep his face smooth but as she buried her face in his chest, throwing her arms around him, his breath hitched.

She looked up into his eyes and sighed as he swallowed.

"I've lost you, haven't I?" she asked softly.

"We lost each other," Neville forced out, every word an effort. "I'm not sure when."

Tears brimmed in her eyes, and he hated himself. "We were always good at keeping secrets from ourselves," she said tremulously as she rested her head back against his chest.

"I'm sorry," he said uselessly, and he blinked hard to keep the tears behind his eyelids where they belonged, not splashing down his cheeks. "I just... can't do this anymore. I'm sorry. I'm breaking a thousand promises, but I just can't keep going like this."

"I know." She traced an idle pattern against his back through his shirt, and he closed his eyes, clenching his jaw. "I'm sorry too. You've deserved someone worth those promises."

"You are." A tear escaped, and there was no stopping them now. He clutched Luna to him as though she were the only thing keeping him standing; it was entirely possible she was. "You're worth all those promises and a thousand more and you're worth keeping those promises and you're worth lying for and telling the truth for and you're worth every star in the sky and I just - I wish -"

Luna sniffed, and he realized that, for the first time, he was seeing her cry. "I've been horrid to you, and it's not your fault. You deserve someone who's happy to make a life with you, not someone who sees a life with you as a restraint." Her shoulders heaved in a sob. "I wish I could be that for you. I wish I could be anyone else in the world but me right now, because being me is hurting you."

"Never say that." Neville held her out from him and looked seriously at her. "It isn't you. And it's not me. We're not bad people because this didn't work. Being you is not hurting me." He crushed her to him again. "You being you is what makes this so hard, because I love you. God, Luna, I love you so much. But... I can't stand _Us_."

"We're not very good at Us," Luna agreed miserably. She hiccoughed. "This is really happening, isn't it? This isn't some horrible dream."

"I wish it was. I wish the last five months were just some horrible dream." He bent his head to nestle his face in her curls, and then it truly dawned on him that he'd never be able to do this again. He inhaled deeply. Mugwort, ginger, and citrus.

He couldn't stop the sob that escaped from his chest like a feral animal, and he pulled Luna to the floor with him as his knees buckled. Kneeling, they were nearly of a height, and Neville clung to her desperately, unable to do anything but take deep, ragged breaths as the storm that had been brewing the whole day finally released itself. Wrapped in Luna's arms, he gave up all pretenses of control and wept like he had not since he was a small child and had first learned what pain could be.

* * *

><p>The sun found them twined around one another, tangled in the sheets, still fully clothed and holding each other tightly, as if afraid to let go even in sleep, knowing that once they finally let go it was forever.<p>

If Neville had expected sleep to dull the pain, he was mistaken. He had a few brief moments of just-woken obliviousness, and then reality spilled over him like an ocean wave. It was all he could do to stop himself from wailing.

Knowing it would be harder the longer he put it off, he began to extricate himself from the many-limbed embrace, praying she wouldn't wake. Praying that he could at least give her a few more minutes or hours free of the pain they'd nurtured to a sudden and wrenching maturation. But she had always been a light sleeper, and though she kept her eyes closed, she clasped his hand tighter, tears peeking from beneath her pale lashes.

"I have to go," he finally said. It wasn't even worth dwelling on the heaviness in his chest as he did so - he was just going to assume it was a feeling that would never go away.

"Please don't," Luna said in a small voice. "I don't want this to end. It can't. We're... we're Neville and Luna. We're what should have been years ago."

"You know we're not." He gently began prying her fingers from his hand. "What we were years ago is what we should aspire to now." He coughed. "Maybe not _now_. Maybe not for a long time."

"I don't know what I'll do, knowing you're not here for me when I get home. I don't know where home is anymore, if I haven't got you." Her voice shimmered with tears as she let go of his hand. He pushed himself to the edge of the bed and sat up, angled to watch her. He reached out and ran a hand along her arm.

"This is still your home, if you want it to be. And I'll be here. I'll always be here. Just like you'll always come home, until..." he swallowed. "Until you meet someone else, and home changes meaning."

She did not say anything, but her shoulders quivered. Neville reached to stroke her hair, but stopped himself and forced himself to stand instead.

"I'm... I'll be at Hogwarts. If you need me for anything."

He had collected a bundle of clothes - he didn't even know if they were all clean - and been nearly out the bedroom door when she spoke again.

"What do we do now?"

Neville took a deep breath. "I'll let you know when I find out."

She looked so small and forlorn that he paused, and against his better judgment, went over and kissed her on the forehead. "I love you. That won't ever change."

It would have been so easy to listen to the part of him that clamored for him to drop the stack of clothing and crawl back into the bed, to hold her to him and forget for a moment that they'd be fighting again in a few weeks, tongues sharp and wounding. It would have been so easy to just give in and damn what everyone else saw plain as day- what he saw plain as day - just to be with her for one more hour, one more week, one more year.

He straightened, adjusted his grip on the bundle, and walked purposefully from the room. In a heroic display of self-control, he did not cry until he'd stowed the clothes away in the chest of drawers in his quarters at Hogwarts.

* * *

><p>The Three Broomsticks was full of students. Some of them waved at Neville when they noticed him, and he offered a halfhearted wave back, returning his gaze to the two empty chairs across from him. None of them approached him; they all somehow had gleaned that something had happened to him, though he'd tried to present as normal a face as possible that past week. Even Fox had been more subdued in his private game of one-upmanship he'd been goading Neville with all year.<p>

He'd nearly given up and left his Butterbeer on the table when a shadow passed over him. He looked up, and made an effort to smile.

"All right, Harry? Ron?"

"All right, Neville," Harry replied as he pulled out a chair. Ron sat silently, not quite pulling off the glower he was attempting.

Neville licked his lips. "I'm a terrible liar. Let me buy you a round."

Harry and Ron glanced at each other with the wordless communication that only happens among the closest of friends. "Yeah. Okay," Ron said finally. He folded his hands in front of him on the table as Neville signaled to Rosmerta.

They'd sat in uncomfortable silence for some time before Neville coughed. "I'm sorry I was an complete and utter arsehole," he said finally.

Ron shrugged. "You were in a bad spot." He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry it ended the way it did."

Neville took a long draft of his Butterbeer to hide the dismay that fluttered in his stomach. "You were right. You both were. It needed to end." He tried for another smile, and it almost wasn't a grimace. "Thanks for having the guts to tell me."

Ron waved it away. "Yeah, well."

Harry chuckled, then his face grew more solemn. "Are you going to be all right?" he asked seriously.

Neville let out a long breath, looking between the two of them. "Yeah. I'll be okay."


	18. And Then?

_**And then...**_

Life went on.

There were lapses in judgment. Neville went home for the summer to find Luna gone, the study restored to the bedroom it had been, with a note in her slanted handwriting assuring him that she would be sending an owl with her rent.

She'd lied. She came to deliver the rent personally, and the shock of seeing her was so great that Neville was not entirely certain exactly when they had ended up in bed. All he could recall for certain was the sudden feeling of "_What the hell am I doing?_" that immobilized him for the barest of seconds before the rest of him decided that at the moment, he just didn't care what the hell he was doing, because this was Luna, and he ached for her.

"This was not the most intelligent decision I've ever made," she said quietly later, nestled against his chest. It still felt like she belonged there.

"We are dumb," Neville agreed, and he held her more tightly.

"Monuments should be built to commemorate how dumb we are."

"I agree."

"I should go."

"Mmm hmm."

She didn't. Not for a while.

"This can't happen again," Neville said as he stood at the door, watching her make her way down the path.

_**And then...**_

It did, of course. But only once more. After that, Luna got her own flat.

They exchanged letters, polite things, and the ache faded to something that only hurt when he touched it, like a healing bruise.

_**And then...**_

Ginny broke off her engagement with Harry.

Not permanently. And it wasn't exactly breaking it off, it was putting it on hold, until she was done with her Quidditch career and could devote the time and energy to a marriage and a family.

Of course, Harry was in no place to see logic. He was, in turns, depressed, angry, lost, confused, and bitter.

Neville met him most nights after work. He'd read a quote once along the lines of "Shared pain is lessened." It proved true.

_**And then...**_

Life went on.

Harry married Ginny earlier than they'd planned. They also had their first son earlier than they'd planned. The two events were not unrelated.

_**And then...**_

Neville signed off on the approval of the change in leadership of Junior Herbological Society. He looked over the declaration before he folded it and dripped some wax over the seal of the envelope, pressing his signet ring into it as it cooled. He smiled to himself. He supposed he should have seen it coming - Fox and Perkins, that is. Since Fox had joined Society at the end of his second year, they'd been sharing shy glances and accidentally bumping into one another in the corridors. And now, just before the beginning of their fourth, they'd asked if they could be co-officers.

He hoped that, for their sakes, they'd be one of the lucky pairs who hit the mark the first time.

_**And then...**_

It was a Friday evening. Classes were done for the day, and Neville had a bone to pick.

Flourish and Blotts was closed, however, and as he'd come all this way, he supposed he may as well stop in at the Leaky Cauldron and have a drink.

He slid into a booth and a blond waitress approached the table, absently pushing her fringe behind her ear as she fished a pad of paper from her apron. "Good evening, sir, what can I get for you?"

Neville stared blankly for a moment. "I know you," he said slowly.

She smiled, a little impishly. "We were in Herbology together," she offered.

"Right!" Neville snapped his fingers. "Hannah. Hannah Abbott." He grinned. "How's life treating you?"

"Oh, you know," Hannah said dismissively, waving her hand around the pub. "I'm assistant landlady here. Normally I don't wait tables, but our regular girl is ill, and so, well, here I am. I hear you're the Herbology professor at Hogwarts now."

"Starting my fourth year there." He shook his head and chuckled. "You'd think by now that Flourish and Blotts would have learned to check with me before substituting the edition of the textbook they order."

"Is there actually a difference?" Hannah looked curious.

"Well, most of the time, no. I'll admit that this time, it's all ego. I wrote the revised entry for _Mimbulus Mimbletonia _in the new edition." He tried to keep the glow of pride from being _too_ self-indulgent.

"Wow. A professor and published. Look at you." She winked, and Neville's mouth went slightly dry.

"Well, it's not like it's much... assistant landlady, you said?"

"That's right," Hannah replied, looking around the pub fondly. "It's going to be mine someday. You watch." She returned her attention to her pad of paper. "Now. What'll it be?"

Neville considered the bottles behind the bar for a moment. "What've you got in whiskeys from the highlands? Not too peaty?"

"A whiskey man. I like it." Hannah tapped her pen against her lip in thought. "We've a Mosstowie eighteen that might tickle you. Want me to bring a tot to taste?"

Neville raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know that was an option."

Hannah grinned mischievously. "It's not. But I'll make an exception for old acquaintances." She punched Neville lightly in the arm. "Herbology nerds have got to stick together."

He watched as she made her way to the bar, resting on her elbows on the counter as she talked to the barman. He marveled at the tiny twist of... something... in his gut, something that felt warm and just slightly frightening.

She returned with a tiny shot glass filled halfway with the amber liquor. Neville tasted hesitantly and found it very much to his liking.

As Hannah turned to get him a full serving from the bar, he screwed up all his courage and said it: "What time are you -"

"Midnight," Hannah cut him off, looking over her shoulder at him with a shy smile. "And I haven't got anyone expecting me home."

It felt like it had been a long while since Neville had smiled so widely.

_**And then...**_

Life went on.

He was surprised to hear, from Ginny, that Luna's definition of "home" now included occasional references to a man called Rolf Scamander, a name Neville felt he should know but couldn't bring to the front of his mind. He spent several days trying to determine how he felt about this, before coming to a conclusion that stunned him: the echoes of "could have been" didn't hurt anymore.

The letter he penned was perhaps a trifle formal. The letter he received in return was a little reserved. But it was the formality and reservation of two people who have once known one another and would like to again, not two people trying to dance around the pain of memories.

_**And then...**_

Neville decided he liked Rolf. He was quick to laugh and had a gift for odd metaphors and terrible puns that made Luna smile, and then he would snap a hasty photo before her smile could fade. She deserved to smile.

Luna approved of Hannah. She would not say why, not to Neville, but giggling conversations stopped when Neville was in earshot, and that was often indication that two girls got on, no matter how old they were.

_**And then...**_

Neville was pleased and not at all surprised to hear that both Fox and Perkins had achieved "Outstanding" in all their O.W.L.s.

_**And then...**_

The bells above the door chimed playfully as he entered. Lamps illuminated the shop, reflecting off the glass display cases, making the entire interior dazzle. A grandfatherly man looked up from a ledger in the back of the shop in response to the bells and looked Neville over.

Neville smiled nervously.

Willard grinned. "Now that's more like it."

_- finite -_


End file.
